'Night Falls on Manhattan' pounds with corruption

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): If one person can be cited for molding New York's urban angst into its present film noir form, it is Sidney Lumet.

Starting in the 1970s with his memorable Serpico, Lumet has helped immortalize the genre's hallmarks of frenetic pace, the neurotic drive for success, the daily convergence of hyper- tension, opportunism, skepticism and cut-throat competition creating the conundrum that is the city itself.

In this urban labyrinth of Stygian gloom where naivete has no place, sugar-high dynamism belies skewed, overworked brains teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Lumet revels in such paradoxes, celebrating not the pasted smiles that make up their social facade, but the gaping hole of modern disillusionment beneath.

His latest New York in Night Falls on Manhattan, is his old, unchanged one pounding with corruption and violence, stretching insalubriously from the dark and dingy ghetto of dope dealers, scavengers and scum of the earth right to the heart of law enforcement. As usual, his focus is not on the pitch black representation of evil or milk white embodiment of truth, but the blurred, ill-defined gray in between.

In the movie's superb opening montage, we see a bedraggled Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) learning the hard, ugly facts about the daily workings of the legal system. Life is certainly not easy being a rookie in the D.A. office. You not only get dissuaded by deadbeat mentors who tell you that idealism is mere psychobabble or judges who doze off during your hard-won summation, but you are also belittled by your own crummy clients.

Worse, you get used by the powers that be. When big-time dope dealer Jordan Washington (Sheik Mahmoud-Bey) kills two police officers and wounds another during a drug bust gone awry, the incensed political animal who is the district attorney, Morgenstern (Ron Leibman), sees the perfect opportunity in Sean not only to win the case hands down, but also to shore up his flagging popularity. The wounded officer, as it turns out, is Sean's father, Liam (Ian Holm).

Morgenstern is, naturally, a true product of the system, and his instincts for the jugular are proven acute. His apologetic and gratitude-mumbling protege rises to the challenge, making mincemeat of seasoned defense attorney Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss) and plonking Washington down where he should be (in the joint forever).

He becomes a media poster boy and the toast of his profession, all the way until he becomes, implausibly or otherwise, the D.A. in what must be the swiftest career rise in legal history.

We also see something else brewing not so visibly. Garcia gets to reprise his media-parodying Accidental Hero role in which he metamorphoses from a junkie to a national hero entirely by default, a role which, incidentally, he is very good at.

Night Falls on Manhattan is no comedy and Sean Casey has, to an extent, "earned" his way up. But the underlying principle remains the same: he is being used by the system. We only have to see the knowing smirk of Jude Ciccolella's acerbic, "I've-seen-it-all" Internal Affairs interrogator as he addresses Sean not as the budding D.A., but as the wet-behind-the-ears college graduate that he also is.

Circumstances turn against Sean, but that's always part of the deal in a society where everybody uses everybody. Vigoda reasserts his defense that Washington was acting in self-defense against corrupt cops who had been receiving steady payoffs from him. Soon, Sean has to choose between duty and loyalty, job or family.

That law enforcers have found themselves titillated from time to time by the promise of money is certainly no novelty to Hollywood. For Lumet, particularly, this theme is as well-worn as his career, but one which still retains its relevance. His works, including Serpico, Prince of the City (which could easily have been titled "Serpico Revisited"), Dog Day Afternoon, Nework and Twelve Angry Men are all fables of strengthened idealism in an atavistic, corrupt system.

Lumet stands unflinching in his focus, never sacrificing his characters for stylistics, even of the noir kind (smoky veneers, Kafkaesque proportions, distorted camera angles) that he has helped make famous. He gives us instead a smart and perceptive script, and strong three-dimensional characters against the backdrop of stark realism.

Take Morgenstern, whose explosive monolog represent conversational candor and gung ho pragmatism at their best.

Liam Casey (Ian Holm) and his partner, Joey Allegretto (James Gandolfini) charge the scene with mordant realism, totally believable as screws in the system who have weathered more than their fair share of doomed monotony.

There is something especially endearing about Holm as he skillfully combines foul talk, junk-heat-grit and self- introspection, all tell-tale signs of the ravages of a corrupt system taking its toll.

Sheik Mahmoud-Bey is downright electrifying as the drug kingpin. Far from being the circumspect image of justice denied, there is not an ounce of modesty about him, let alone self- recrimination. In a remarkable act of self-possession, he disrobes before the hollering press and demonstrates every inch of his glorious physique, suggesting he bears no imprint of the vice he is accused of peddling.

Even Richard Dreyfuss, whose recent CV reeks of cheap parody roles (remember his laughable take on Bob Dole in The American President?) gives a mature performance as the Alan Dershowitz- style defense attorney Vigoda.

In the vortex of forces pulling upon him -- great acting as well as the gravity of the premise -- the handsome, if slightly shallow, Garcia fits into the part with good acting that flits from comic to serious to intense, and profligate charm.

As author Steve Martini once wrote "The criminal side of the law provides a window on the dark side of life that exists nowhere else". We already know that the criminal justice system is unable to prevent innocence from being callously destroyed.

But in the end, as the highest inhabitant of the law enforcement pecking order reserves the last say, we also know that the law stands way up there as the foremost designer of special rules for special people. And we wonder, too, why there is any morality crisis at all.