Plot
Based on the non-fiction book by Peter Maas, the film covers twelve years (from 1960 to June 15, 1972) in the life of Frank Serpico, a NYPD officer who wants to do the best he can as a policeman. Working as a uniformed patrolman, Serpico succeeds in every assignment. He moves on to plainclothes assignments, where he slowly discovers a hidden world of illicit activities among his own colleagues. After witnessing cops doing drugs, committing violence, taking paybacks and other forms of police corruption, Serpico decides to expose what he's seen, but he is harassed and threatened. The struggle leads to infighting within the police force, problems in his personal relationships, and life-threatening situations. Finally, after being shot in the face during a drug bust on February 3, 1971, he testifies before the Knapp Commission, which was a government inquiry into police corruption between 1970 and 1972.
Read more about this topic: Serpico
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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