SERPICO begins with critically injured NYPD cop Frank Serpico (Al Pacino, in a tour de force, Academy Award-nominated performance) being whisked through a hospital on a gurney. As the audience awaits his fate, Lumet flashes back to Serpico’s start on the force as an idealistic and honest rookie cop determined to live the “serve and protect” motto. When he witnesses and begins reporting bribery within the department, he risks his livelihood and his very life, and despite hostility from his colleagues and superiors, Serpico remains steadfast in his commitment to rooting out corruption from within. Based on a true story, SERPICO finds Lumet in his element on the streets of Manhattan (on the film, Lumet marveled, “New York as a setting is capable of whatever mood or dramatic statement you want to make), and showcases Pacino at his nerviest, embodying Serpico as one tenacious man against an entire rotten system. Upon SERPICO’s release, Vincent Canby of the New York Times praised the film as “a remarkable record of one man's rebellion against the sort of sleaziness and second-rateness that has affected so much American life, from the ingredients of its hamburgers to the ethics of its civil servants and politicians.”