May 16, 1997 | Even though his resume includes such notable efforts as Serpico, Network, 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon, Sidney Lumet is one of our least recognized and most under-rated great moviemakers. In an era when critics and journalist rush to hype every fresh-faced film brat who trots out of Sundance with a jury prize and a distribution deal, the 72-year Lumet is routinely overlooked or, on those rare occasions when he is acknowledged, taken for granted.
Part of the problem, of course, is his spotty box-office record. Lumet hasn’t had a substantial hit for more than a decade. (Actually, not since 1982, when The Verdict made money and brought Lumet his fourth Oscar nomination for Best Director.) And then there’s the matter of his prolificacy. Lumet is a throwback to those Old Hollywood professionals who operated under a simple rule: If you are a moviemaker, you keep making movies. An admirable work ethic, perhaps, but one that has led Lumet in recent years to attach his name to such dubious achievements as Garbo Talks, Guilty as Sin and A Stranger Among Us. Call them make-work projects, you won’t be far off the mark.
Lumet’s latest film, Night Falls on Manhattan, is not, strictly speaking, a comeback. After all, he never really went away. But the movie, a gripping drama of uncommon depth, intelligence and moral complexity, finds the director once again working very close to the top of his form. Indeed, the coming-attractions trailers — featuring clips from some of Lumet’s greatest hits — would lead you to believe that Lumet, not Andy Garcia or Richard Dreyfuss, is the real star here. And for that, the publicists at Paramount Pictures deserve some sort of Truth in Advertising Award.
Night Falls on Manhattan represents what Lumet does best: a hard-edged, street-smart drama in which characters are forced to reconsider their motivations and assumptions, and moral issues are weighed without a trace of trendy irony. Working from a screenplay he adapted from Tainted Evidence, a novel by Robert Daley, Lumet give us a persuasively detailed and emotionally intense film that brings out the best in just about everybody involved.
Andy Garcia has never been more compelling than he is under Lumet’s direction here as Sean Casey, an idealistic assistant D.A. who endures professional and personal upheavals after he gets his first big break as a prosecutor. Three police officers are killed, and a fourth is seriously wounded, during a raid on a notorious drug dealer’s Harlem headquarters. Morgenstern (Ron Leibman), the hard-charging district attorney, thinks Sean would be the perfect person to handle the case, and not just because of the younger man’s legal acumen. The wounded officer just happens to be Sean’s father, Liam (Ian Holm), an N.Y.P.D. mainstay for 36 years. That alone, Morgensten figures, will be enough to sway a jury’s sympathy to Sean’s cause in the courtroom.
Defense attorney Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss), a William Kuntsler clone, tries to defend the drug dealer by arguing his client fired in self-defense. Vigoda claims the dealer had been marked for death by crooked cops who, until recently, had been on the dealer’s payroll. But the jury doesn’t buy Vigoda’s story, and hands down a guilty verdict. Sean becomes popular enough to make his own bid for the D.A.’s job. Shortly before the election, however, Sean has second thoughts about Vigoda’s accusations. And after he takes office, the new D.A. must consider whether his father’s long-time partner (James Gandolfini) took money from the convicted drug dealer.
Lumet is fully capable of handling a fast-break action sequence like the Harlem shoot-out. But Night Falls on Manhattan works best when words are the most deadly weapons in use, when characters clash in heated confrontations to discover the worst about each other — and, inevitably, about themselves.
Garcia is powerfully convincing as Sean struggles to maintain his moral equilibrium, especially in his highly-charged scenes with the quietly brilliant Holm. (Nitpickers, take note: To pre-empt any comments about the ethnic dissimilarities between father and son, Lumet gives us a glimpse of a Spanish surname on the tombstone of Sean’s mother.) Leibman gives an Oscar-worthy supporting performance as Morgenstern, the sort of dynamo who never shouts when a scream will serve just as well, and Dreyfuss makes the most of his relatively small but key role as a modern-day Cassandra. Only Lena Olin seems adrift here, laboring under the constraints of an uncertain accent and a thinly written role as Sean’s lawyer girlfriend.
Night Falls on Manhattan is a movie made by, with and for grown-ups. As such, it is a welcome addition to a season that appears to promise little more than bigger and louder explosions from most other Hollywood offerings. Don’t get me wrong: The Fifth Element is a terrific entertainment — maybe even, strictly speaking, a better movie overall than Night Falls on Manhattan. Still, it’s reassuring to know that someone like Sidney Lumet is still around, to show us that, sometimes, the most impressive special effect is making an audience care about a life-size drama involving nothing more fantastical than flawed, all-too-human characters.
