The man who testified about the extensive corruption in his own police department and took a bullet in the face for his troubles opens up in this fascinating, frequently frustrating doc. A straight arrow with a bohemian soul (and hair) who retired to his Greenwich Village apartment after every shift, Serpico was predictably never trusted by his colleagues, while his pedantry over liberties taken in the classic 1973 “biopic” starring Al Pacino (the film is quoted often here) made director Sidney Lumet want to shoot him too. This portrait is as garrulous as the man himself—appropriately, given his uncategorizable mix of hippie insouciance and obstinate New York cop-itude, but it also means that a reunion with an old partner who left him to bleed to death takes a lot of time to go nowhere.

Georgia Straight, September 2017