let me open this one with a confession : i love cop movies . 
i adore them with such an unwavering , near foolish passion that i was actually one of the first in line to see 1998's one tough cop starring the smirkiest of the baldwin brothers , steven . 
was it any good ? 
well , just about as good as baldwin's steven seagal impression ( for those i've confused the answer is a resounding no ! ) . 
now let me clarify , i don't love just any cop movie ; i'm not too keen on the smug buddy cop flicks that were so in vogue in the 80's and now slowly ( gulp ) returning thanks to jackie chan and chris tucker . 
i'm partial to those gritty , earthy cop dramas like serpico , donnie brasco , and the french connection . 
problem is these films come along just about as often as george w . bush makes a cogent point so whenever a " true " cop movie does hit multiplexes , i come running towards it like an eager puppy ? ? ? and inevitably i leave , head bowed , tripping over my squiggly tail . 
so what is it about cop movies that transform me into a moron willing to shell out $7 . 50 for a movie called one tough cop ( which actually sounds a lot like a wiseguy spin-off , no ? ) ? 
truth is i'm a sucker for those barren streets , that gritty , graffiti strewn modernist jungle where dangerous criminals lurk and cops , like modern day knights , must shield us from their iniquitous clutches . 
yes it's all very corny and awfully boys clubish , which , i'm guessing , is precisely where these feelings come from . 
as little tots us boys are brought up to create our own wars with gi joe's , enact cops and robbers or cowboy and indian fantasies , etc . the best gritty cop films tap into those gleeful adolescent fantasies , and heighten them , turning it all into an existential nightmare of thin moral lines and psychological chaos . 
as an adult my tastes haven't changed all that drastically ; sure i can get a cerebral high from the emotional complexities of a krzysztof kieslowski film , but i still delight at the promise a " guy " film could potentially bring . 
now what if it's the cops who're the corrupt ones ? 
ooh that one really gets me going , these protectors using all that at their service , taking advantage of others for their own gain . 
throw a courtroom drama ( yech ! ) 
into the pot and you have the tremendously absorbing sidney lumet film prince of the city . 
how absorbing is prince of the city , you ask ? 
so damn absorbing that when the film shifts from gritty undercover cop drama to courtroom drama ( a sub-genre i loath the way kristy swanson must loath sarah michelle gellar ) i remained completely and utterly involved . 
the film stars treat williams , who gives the kind of performance that should have skyrocketed his career up to the level that brad pitt currently resides at . 
since i was hatched a mere two years prior to the release of prince of the city , i cannot provide an answer as to why it didn't . 
 ( though judging from his recent roles in tripe like deep rising and dead heat i would guess that it probably has something to do with quite a few bad career moves ) . 
like mickey rourke and eric roberts ( both of whom are currently doing time in direct to video purgatory ) williams is a talented leading man who didn't make it to where he should have . 
 ( if there was any justice in this dog gone world keanu reeves would be the one banished to direct to video hell ) . 
here , the actor is given a role not all that dissimilar from al pacino's in serpico ( also directed by lumet ) . 
williams plays danny ciello , a member of an elite squad of police officers who take down drug dealers on the gritty pre-juliani streets of new york . 
they work without uniforms or hours much like paid vigilantes . 
and that analogy is more than apt seeing as how the bunch are kinda sorta forced into using corrupt means to get the job done . 
the squad relies entirely on informants ( low level junkies ) to gain access to the big wigs , and in order to obtain the info they seek , they sometimes have to provide the junkies with the junk of their choice . 
danny has done this , and though he's a fairly honorable guy , who took the job in order to do good , his intentions have gotten a bit skewed along the way . 
he seeks redemption and concludes that the best way to go about getting it is by talking to internal affairs who then convince him to go undercover as a " double agent " . 
he does so with one condition : he will not rat on his partners . 
right away we know that that is exactly what he'll have to do . 
and watching the movie build to that is thrilling in the way that any great character driven story can be . 
undercover cop films are almost innately exciting , even the kind that pull out all the cliches ( like in too deep ) . 
how can one not be moved by the issues of betrayal , ambiguity , and the danger in putting oneself in such a risky position ? 
prince of the city takes all this and charges it with a perceptive , hard boiled script and taut unintrusive direction by old pro sidney lumet , as well as a handful of intense performances , most notably by treat . 
lumet's greatest contribution to the movie is how he lays back , and lets the camera soak up the action . 
his scenes transition rapidly from one to the next building layers of tension , and he rarely holds for reaction shots , instead he clicks away at precisely the moment a character stops yakking . 
lumet's worst tendency is one that many film makers ( especially oliver stone ) tend to overuse : he relies a little too heavily on actors shouting their lines at each other presumably in order to ratchet up the tension . 
this isn't as much a problem here as it was in night falls on manhattan , lumet's most recent cop \ lawyer endeavor , a movie that nearly gave me an ulcer from just watching . 
though of late lumet has made several really awful career choices ( maybe he and treat should get together for a drink or something ) , the most recent a completely unnecessary remake of gloria , here he was on , sustaining tension in a film that runs for 167 minutes with not one dull spot . 
some of the formula pictures i like the best are the most simplistic . 
hollywood often forgets how easy it is to make these kinds of pictures even tolerable . 
of course cop movies aren't popular anymore ( yes buddy cop flicks are popular but those are more like extended sitcoms with gunfire amid the punch lines ) , but just look at the average hollywood action movies , flicks so bloated and full of unnecessary fat like the boring love interest that serves no purpose other than to stall the action and demonstrate that our hero isn't gay , the lame comic relief character who's never funny , and on and on . 
for all its moral ambiguities prince of the city is a back to the basics cop \ courtroom drama that leaves out all the crap and really thrills . 
it focuses completely on its story , and its characters all of whom are completely believable from the cops to the lawyers to the junkies . 
there's a great scene early on where an irate williams shouts at an ia officer and looks as if he's about to go into one of those corny braveheart inspirational speeches , but instead he breaks down in front of the cop and begins sobbing . 
this is a scene that would never make it into a michael bay film ( even though bruce willis sacrifices his life at the end of armageddon , not one damn tear ) it would be cut out because the director would say oh that makes him too human , excuse me , weak . 
in the very next scene danny speaks in a hushed raspiness , straining to get the words out . 
he's lost his voice . 
does that little itty bitty detail matter ? 
maybe not to most , but it sure made my night . 
and in a sprawling epic of corruption , greed , betrayal and violence it's nice to see that someone is paying attention to the little things .