He refused to accept such grease, and became despised for it both inside and outside the department.
#HAMLET FULL MOVIE 1997 FREE#
The street-savvy but idealistic Officer Serpico was appalled at the cliquishness and the payoffs free meals as well as big, blatant bribes from criminals, gamblers, numbers men and ordinary merchants whom he saw as a beat cop in Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct and later while working vice and racketeering.
He lived a bohemian life, with a small garden apartment on Perry Street in the West Village, where he was known as Paco and hid his police badge. His intrigues with the ballet and opera rubbed against the conservative culture of the station house. His partners and bosses resented his hippie looks and his zealousness to make arrests even while off-duty or on the turf of other officers. Or I’m in a jam and I call the police, and guess who shows up? My old cop buddies who hated me.” “I open a door a little bit and it just explodes in my face. None of which has exorcised the demons of being Serpico. He has a girlfriend: she is French, a schoolteacher, age 50. He takes long walks at sunrise and rescues wounded animals. He practices meditation, the Japanese Zen flute and African drumming, and dance: ballroom, tango, swing. Serpico relies on Chinese medicine, herbs and shiatsu. He eats mostly vegetarian and organic food, cooking on the wood-burning stove that heats the cabin, where there is neither television nor the Internet.
He eschewed what he sees as an ugly American addiction to consumerism and media brainwashing. “I had gone through a near-death experience,” he explained, “and that gives you an insight into how fleeting life is, and what’s important.”Īfter he settled here, his journey turned inward. Working title: “Before I Go.”įrank Serpico testifying before the Knapp Commission. The memoir begins with the same awful scene as the film: Serpico shot in the face during a heroin bust on Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Feb. Serpico is working on his own version of the harrowing adventures chronicled by Peter Maas’s biography, which sold more than three million copies (royalties from the book and the movie have helped him live comfortably without working). In 1997, he spoke out after the brutal beatings of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn station house, but mostly he stays far from his old nemesis. He finally settled about two hours north of New York City, where he lives a monastic life in a one-room cabin he built in the woods near the Hudson River. Serpico returned to the United States around 1980 and lived as a nomad, out of a camper. Serpico took his fluffy sheepdog, Alfie, and boarded a ship to Europe the film’s closing credits describe him as “now living somewhere in Switzerland.” The movie along with news reports and the best-selling biography of the same name seared the public memory with painful images: of the honest cop bleeding in a squad car rushing to the hospital, where, over months of rehabilitation, he received cards telling him to rot in hell. He also still carries bullet fragments lodged just below his brain from the drug shooting he is deaf in his left ear, and has nerve damage in his left leg.įor many, “Serpico” conjures the face of Al Pacino, who won his first Golden Globe award for his star turn in the film. Serpico still carries the detective shield he was awarded as he left the department on a disability pension and, often, his licensed revolver, with which he takes target practice on his 50-acre property not far from this Columbia County hamlet.