“Many of his fellow officers considered him the most dangerous man alive – an honest cop.”
That was the tagline for the rabble-rousing cop docudrama Serpico when it premiered 50 years and it’s astonishing, in retrospect, that Paramount Pictures slapped it on top of the poster and advertising, and that audiences turned out in large numbers to see it. The tagline accurately reflects the film’s central thesis: that institutional corruption is so pervasive in the New York police department – and, by implication, city departments across the country – that a cop interested in simply doing his job on the level would face impossible (and potentially fatal) obstacles. But to bring a sentiment like that into the mainstream feels impossible in the Hollywood of today, which would never risk alienating the Blue Lives Matter crowd.
