Compromise is often the secret sin of success. The pragmatist-winners live with this, kidding themselves that the good they’ll accomplish with their new power outweighs the bad they’ve done or tolerated. But when genuine idealists face that contradiction, they can be shaken to the core.
That’s the fate of Sean Casey, the working-class prosecuting district attorney played by Andy Garcia in “Night Falls on Manhattan.” It’s a New York movie by a great New York director: 72-year-old Sidney Lumet, whose view of his complex hometown and its melting-pot communities is hard, humane and lucid, uniquely his own.
In movies such as “The Pawnbroker,” “Bye Bye Braverman,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network,” “Prince of the City” and “Q & A,” Lumet — as much as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen — has hewn out his own rich slice of the city. And though the movie is erratic and Lumet seems stronger here as director than screenwriter, it’s good to see him so solidly back on his turf, in the city he can call, cinematically, his home.
Though it’s in the form of a cop thriller, based on the novel “Tainted Evidence” by Robert Daley, “Night Falls on Manhattan” is an attempt to examine modern society, politics and law enforcement closely and honestly, to do justice to the often disheartening tangle of urban life in the ’90s. At the center of this moral quandary and the dangerous city around it all is Garcia’s Sean and his prosecutor’s progress. We first see Sean in his initiation into the D.A.’s staff: a dispiriting address, rife with cynicism.
Given the job of prosecuting Harlem’s biggest drug czar, Jordan Washington (Shiek Mahmud-Bey), for killing two cops and wounding another during an arrest, Sean makes his reputation — through a public relations gimmick. Sean, though a neophyte as a prosecutor, is the son of a cop, Liam Casey (Ian Holm), who was severely wounded in the fight. Morgenstern (Ron Leibman), the ruthless, smart D.A. who picked Sean, knows he’ll probably win the case on both skill and public sentiment. He also wants the prosecution out of the hands of his own assistant, whom he suspects of political sabotage. (He’s right.)
But, after Sean wins the case and Morgenstern suffers a heart attack, it’s the cop’s son who gets picked by the Democratic Party as their new D.A. candidate. At that point, the case Sean won — to make his career — begins to unravel. The opposing defense attorney, a silky old lefty named Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss), already has planted the idea that his defendant was set up by the cops. Sean’s new lover, Sam’s law partner Peggy Lindstrom (Lena Olin), helps increase his skepticism.
If Sam is right, the first two cops on the scene may well be involved: Joey Allegretto (James Gandolfini) and Sean’s own dad, Liam Casey — who nearly died and whom Sean knows only as the decent upright man who sacrificed for decades to help Sean get ahead.
That fearful doubt is the core of “Night Falls.” Lumet, who cut his teeth as a young movie director on adapted plays by Tennessee Williams (“Orpheus Descending” aka “The Fugitive Kind”), Arthur Miller (“A View from the Bridge”) and Eugene O’Neill (“Long Day’s Journey into Night” and a legendary TV production of “The Iceman Cometh”), hasn’t lost his gift for primal emotionalism, his nose for dramatic gold.
At its best, “Night Falls on Manhattan” is a worthy successor to Lumet’s other Big Apple movies, “The Pawnbroker,” “Bye Bye Braverman,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Prince of the City” and “Q & A” (indeed, it’s so close to some of them, it almost seems like a personal anthology). At its weakest, the new movie strains at the seams, gives a sense of forced haste, of being a three-hour movie compressed into one. (One clue to the haste: the boom microphone bobbing up and down in one courtroom scene.)
But “Night Falls on Manhattan” is a serious film skillfully done, with terrific acting and a provocative subject. Lumet is great with actors, as he has proved in his first film, the 1957 jury room drama “12 Angry Men”; in the Katharine Hepburn-Ralph Richardson-Jason Robards “Long Day’s Journey into Night”; and in “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict” and others. And, in “Night Falls on Manhattan,” there are good jobs all around, memorable moments from Garcia, Leibman and Mahmud-Bey.
And one superb, unimprovable performance from Holm. When you first hear British stage veteran Holm — who has come up with a perfect Irish New York accent, sounding like an old cop who has never been out of the five boroughs — you realize again what a superb craftsman he is. Why did Holm get so little critic and Oscar support last year for his brilliant razzle-dazzle job as the conniving neighbor restaurateur in “Big Night,” the best job in a wonderfully well-acted film? Do we make the mistake of expecting great acting from Holm all the time?
Garcia plays Sean with intelligence and daring understatement, perhaps in deference to the big bravura jobs by Leibman and Dreyfuss, and the smoldering courtroom showstopper by Olin.
Perhaps it’s because Lumet began his career with a movie that exemplifies all Sean’s youthful idealism about the law — “12 Angry Men” — that he’s so touchy about the betrayals we see here. “Night Falls on Manhattan,” which in some ways is about the decay of the liberal ideals Henry Fonda exemplified in “12 Angry Men,” shows us the city today, ruminates on its fall. It also refers back to many of Lumet’s other movies, especially his cop films. When we examine this movie through the prism of the past — of “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico” and all the others — we see it more clearly, admire its strengths and realize its flaws.
We also can wish that Lumet and his actors could lavish their gifts on stronger literary and dramatic material. When will the studios (or the smaller independents) give him the backing to make a film of Bernard Malamud’s “The Assistant,” the perfect Lumet project and one that he has been trying for decades to realize? That project is a masterpiece waiting to happen. This movie is no masterpiece, but simply another signature work for one of New York’s finest.
”NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN”
(star) (star) (star)
Directed and written by Sidney Lumet; based on the novel “Tainted Evidence” by Robert Daley; photographed by David Watkin; edited by Sam O’Steen; production designed by Philip Rosenberg; music by Mark Isham; produced by Thom Mount, Josh Kramer. A Paramount Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:54. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Sean Casey …………………….. Andy Garcia
Peggy Lindstrom ………………… Lena Olin
Sam Vigoda …………………….. Richard Dreyfuss
Liam Casey …………………….. Ian Holm
Morgenstern ……………………. Ron Leibman
Joey Allegretto ………………… James Gandolfini
