Arriving on DVD within a week of each other, Abel Ferrara's 'R Xmas and Sidney Lumet's tonally opposed Serpico share a preoccupation with the fate of dirty money. Minimum-wagers are seen as honourable by Lumet, with Detective Frank Serpico proudly leading the starving-artist's life behind a cop's badge, while in Ferrara's view, there are few such romantic distinctions to be made between the haves and have-nots; but the temptation of green defines the people we're dealing with in both 'R Xmas and Serpico. Though the two fims illustrate a rather contained moral dilemma, another common denominator is their epic pretense--you'd never know from the scope of these pictures that neither one steps outside its respective milieu. Watched back-to-back, they're like Traffic pulled in two.

It's Christmastime in Manhattan circa 1993 and our heroes, husband and wife smack dealers played by Lillo Brancato, Jr. and Drea De Matteo, need to get their shipments to the street. Meanwhile, their little girl wants the new fad doll, an impossible score that, combined with an impending turf war (as well as a mutual, if unspoken, craving to leave the proverbial Life behind), is sapping them of holiday joy. 'R Xmas is comprised of three or four beats too dramatically fragile to withstand spoilers, I suspect, so, leaving the plot synopsis behind, allow me to brace you for the usual Ferrara-isms: ethnic slurs; a lot of driving around; and an appearance by Victor Argo.

A stubborn anti-commercialist, Ferrara is a prolific filmmaker with neither critical nor cult followings ('R Xmas is his tenth feature in twelve years), and one doesn't imagine that 'R Xmas will affect a change in the popular opinion that he's deliberately obscure--obtuse, even. The picture opens with a horse-drawn carriage clip-clopping through the streets of Victorian-era New York as Lincoln-bearded children spread seasonal cheer, and it ends with the graphic "to be continued," the word "continued" cut off as if to aggravate the viewer's foreordained frustration with this TV gimmick being applied to a film intended for theatrical release not called Back to the Future Part Something.

Occupying the middle of the piece are lethargic sequences that make you long for the breakneck pace of Tarkovsky. But as zonked-out as Ferrara can act in public, 'R Xmas and others of his work are only inexplicable if you lack the patience to draw the lines that connect the dots therein. The prologue, for instance (which gives way to a school play), is an obvious visual metaphor that establishes the quaint grubbiness of pre-Giuliani NYC; "to be continued" is cheeky in spirit, sure, but the film, bookended by breviloquent history lessons that scroll up the screen, was clearly also intended as the debut sketch in a series exposing the radical changes that Ferrara's hometown underwent in the 1990s--a dirge for the last days of Pompeii before Vesuvius cleansed it of corruption, if you will. Whether the auteur goes on to sequelize 'R Xmas seems moot, and as it stands, it's quietly powerful.

Although a product of the zesty cinema of the seventies, Serpico is a two-parter of "Hill Street Blues" next to the spare yet audacious 'R Xmas, heavy on exposition and light on style. A half-reverential biopic for a folk hero of the late-sixties, the film opens with the shooting of Serpico (Al Pacino) and backtracks through the key circumstances leading up to that inevitable day: Serpico's graduation from the police academy; his first "collar" (slang for catching a suspect); his transfers to and from BCI (the records department); his first dog... girlfriend... moustache... beard; and so on. Uniting these disparate events is his steadfast refusal to pocket a take. Force-wide fear that he'll blow the whistle on this generally-accepted practice lands Serpico in the crosshairs of his colleagues, with the exception of a cop with mayoral connections (Tony Roberts) and a few superiors sentimental for the innocence of their early days on the job.

Pacino is riveting in Serpico until his alter ego turns to mush. It sounds more compelling than it is that Serpico--nicknamed "Paco" (after the Peruvian lama?)--becomes so frustrated with anger that, like David Lynch's comic-strip dog, he can't speak, but Serpico's brooding robs at least one character of integrity: "I'm really gonna miss you, Serpico," says Captain McClain (Biff McGuire), which is, at that juncture, akin to bidding fond farewell to a lamppost.

Act one is especially perceptive in pitting Serpico's outside interests (ballet, poetry, classical music) against the conformist expectations of the precinct, culminating in a false accusation that leads to Frank's dismissal from BCI. But Pacino and Lumet drop the ball on the homophobic subtext of Serpico's ostracism, reducing him to a Capra archetype paralyzed by Method rage. Although the policeman's other positive contributions to the profession are touched upon (such as Serpico's pioneering 'street' wardrobe, a better camouflage for undercover work), Lumet has an underdog agenda he won't complicate too much, not with male politics and certainly not with an abundance of technique.

Released to New York theatres and DVD simultaneously, 'R Xmas is one of Artisan's slicker non-Special Edition discs. The film, letterboxed at 1.77:1 and enhanced for 16x9 displays, looks sumptuous in this form--perhaps Ferrara sums it up best in his commentary when he says, "Now that is red." Perfect colouring combines with hair-fine detail to produce one of the year's best video transfers, of an indie production or otherwise. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is less attention-grabbing, devoting most of its energy to a tight bass-line for the hip hop-flavoured score.

Extras include trailers for The Playaz Court, Jacked Up, and Outrage, an on-screen, paragraph-length synopsis of the film (!), and the aforementioned yak-track, an endurance test featuring Ferrara and, apparently, production designer Frank DeCurtis. In desperate need of subtitles or a translator, Ferrara, sounding uncannily like Brando with a mouth full of Kleenex, begins by mocking the introductory logos, mumbles "Vietnam or Asia" in regards to Ken Kelsch's cinematography, and offers "Now you know that dissolve isn't just a dissolve to the next shot" during a dissolve to, well, the next shot. DeCurtis, meanwhile, pipes up whenever an image catches his fancy; how do they acquit themselves on set, one wonders. The pair promises future instalments of 'R Xmas, for what it's worth.

A long-awaited catalogue title, Paramount's DVD release of Serpico presents the film in a clean 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. As with many of the studio's designated classics from the seventies (Don't Look Now, Saturday Night Fever), the picture's aesthetics may betray its age on DVD, but authoring efforts do not. The original mono stems have been remastered in 2.0 mono and 5.1 configurations, the latter a mix distinguished only by the anchoring of dialogue in the centre channel and some inoffensive ambient bleed in the surrounds.

Bonus material is slim: in addition to the horrible self-parody of a theatrical trailer, you'll find four typically wispy Laurent Bouzereau featurettes (I'll wait for my Back to the Future Trilogy review to climb atop that particular soapbox). "Serpico: Real to Reel" (10 mins.) alternates interviews with producer Martin Bregman and director Lumet, who abbreviates the contributions of co-screenwriters Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler. "Inside Serpico" (10 mins.) alternates interviews with Bregman and Lumet again, whilst Bregman and, believe it or not, Lumet select their respective preferred sequence(s) from Serpico in "Serpico: Favorite Moments" (3 mins.). This Chris Farley request of them ('What's the most awesome scene?') leads to surprisingly introspective choices. An animated photo gallery (4 mins.), over which Lumet tells a splendid anecdote revolving around composer Theodorakis, rounds out the disc.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
83 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.77:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1
CC
Yes
Subtitles
Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Artisan

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada
or Compare Prices

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
130 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Mono,
French Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Paramount

the critic

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Published: December 7, 2002