In recent years the thin blue line separating civilians from a protective police force has been put under increasing scrutiny. Largely this is the result of egregious misconduct on the part of our boys in blue, but perhaps most notably in the case of Abner Louima's torture and sodomy violation and of Amidou Diallo's shooting death, both of which occurred in New York City. Out of these moral and ethical crises and the basic dismissal of the edict, "to protect and serve", the police force's thin blue line has also become a wall of self-protection for the police themselves, beset seemingly on all sides by interested parties and critics alike.

Thus, the New York Police Department has come to occupy and symbolize an awkward but necessary institution for the average big city person in recent years. This is because the presence of patrol cars, foot police and stricter social controls has led to a decrease in crime, especially of so-called violent crimes, and an overall stabilization of city centers dovetailing nicely with recent economic prosperity. On the other hand, the well-organized law and order state of 1990s New York City has resulted in the rolling back of civil liberties and increased criminal profiling in accordance with a doctrine of maintaining the peace at all costs.

Both of these conditions stem from the thin blue line and the distinction between lay people and those among our number who maintain the necessary organization of our society. Of course this state of affairs rests on a notion of Us vs. Them since the police are instructed to protect us from ourselves and therefore become an exclusive class over and above our own considerable franchise as citizens of an advanced democracy.

Sidney Lumet's Serpico, undertaken and released in 1973, considers several of these ideas currently occupying critics of big city police leading into the 21st century. Given its thrust in the book by Peter Maas, however, it is undeniably historical and biographical in nature yet it's also conscious of the socio-cultural context in which it operates. That is, in sifting through the layers of the NYPD's fraternal organization to lay bear the potential for corruption in such an organization, Serpico demonstrates how the police can, and have, used their trusted position to uphold the differences between Us, the peaceful citizenry, and Them, the criminal element, but only to their own distinctly unethical advantage.

Opening as Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) is rushed to an emergency room with a gunshot wound to the face, the movie flashes back to his graduation from the police academy in the mid-1960s to sketches his initial confrontation with the NYPD's laissez faire attitude. As an excitable young beat cop he learns how minority populations are frequently corralled into behaving according to predominant ideas of good and bad. He goes to night school, achieves diplomas and certifications but discovers how his book learning is considered an impediment to his unraveling career rather than a catalyst for its rapid ascension in the ranks. And he's forced to relinquish credit for his investigations according to the hierarchy of the department's code of seniority leaving him hopelessly adrift as a copy while noticing how his fellow officers are hopelessly out of sync with the times.

Eventually Serpico becomes a champion of alternative police practices and indulges in the rising counter-culture to bridge the gap between an active police force and a distrustful population. He experiments with drugs, grows his hair long, lives in the heart of Greenwich Village and enjoys the pulse of a youthful world. Gradually, too, his career trajectory towards being a detective takes a turn through undercover work whereupon he stumbles onto one of the biggest systems of police graft and corruption ever to be uncovered in the United States.

Always the honest cop, he refuses to take bribes or tribute, ruins several romantic relationships, sees himself ostracized by his peers and is increasingly threatened by the criminals he's trying to catch as well as by his police cohorts who no longer trust him. Relying on his superior officers to report and end the corrupt practices at the heart of his moral and ethical quandary, he becomes more and more isolated in a situation he sees as untenable.

Finally fed up with being in danger he seeks recourse outside the NYPD to investigate and the problem of graft and corruption but sees his dangerous working conditions further deteriorate. Unable to continue he goes outside the department again, this time to the New York Times, and becomes a reluctant whistle blower only to be left alone on assignment one day when he's shot in the face.

Ending with his testimony before a grand jury convened to investigate his charges, Serpico outlines the need for an intra-police force to investigate the police. Taken as part of the foundation for Internal Affairs, his experience is made the starting point of a sea change in big city police organization as well as being symbolic of a David vs. Goliath story about one righteous man put to the test of his life.

Tagged with the ad copy, "Many of his fellow officers considered him the most dangerous man alive - An honest cop," Serpico is that kind of movie that rests entirely on its central performance. Naturally there are some strong supporting roles and plenty of social commentary about topical issues, but in the last analysis the film is solely the story of Frank Serpico as embodied by Pacino in another of his career's many magnificent performances.

Overtly about a nonconformist, Serpico is really an odyssey into personal resolve, ambition and righteousness writ large on a Biblical scale. Not for nothing, Serpico's struggle to find an unpolluted precinct where he can simply do his job to the best of his ability is so stunningly honest it's almost corny when considered against his story's historical backdrop. Moreover, his journey from novice patrolmen through being a rabble-rouser and final emergence as a conflicted informant is the journey of adult maturation so fundamentally part of fables and myth from various cultures.

Frank Serpico is an uber-man struggling to find himself through the crucible of circumstance. But he's also a cop struggling to define his professional role and point out the complexities and seductions of graft and corruption rampant among those given license to protect society from itself. To the extent Pacino is effective in the role, it's in allowing the part to become something more than a simple philosophical position or voice we might liken to conscience. Instead of being such a theme or voice of plotting and narrative, his characterization is appetitive, quirky, messy and profane. In short, his Frank Serpico has all the necessary parts of a man with noble aspirations, common faults and a simple desire to do good works despite finding himself in a socio-cultural moment seemingly at odds with his everyman wishes.

Throughout the film's Oscar-nominated script by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler, the action is peppered with topical references and realistic dialogue. Though Serpico is the movie's centerpiece and purpose, all of its supporting characters are richly appointed with attitudes, costume and bias that only occasionally slip into caricatures of evil. Not unimportantly, the film's 1973 release was also a revelatory moment in police-centered fictions and journalistic accounts of modern society, largely in light of such whistle blowers and nonconforming good guys as Frank Serpico.

Taken as a piece of Lumet's career interest in New York City, the clash of good and evil and the nature of being an insider examining hostile institutions, Serpico is an important chapter in his romance with urban living. Plus it's a remarkable one man show masquerading as a dramatic ensemble with provocative things to say about the historical appearance of police graft and corruption.

When given more recent revelations about the thin blue line and its perhaps seedy underbelly, however, Serpico may not seem particularly original except as a piece of our collective history. To that end it's inspired, small-scale filmmaking including an anachronistic, but brief, shot of the World Trade Centers in a story that occurred before they were built along with nice supporting performances by Allan Rich, F. Murray Abraham, Judd Hirsch and Tony Lo Bianco.