![]() The film’s reliance on documentary realism, using real New York City locations and an embedded camera style that minimizes artifice, places it firmly among the New Hollywood films that opened up the cinematic vision of America by shooting on its real streets. Stateside once again, training his lens on the New York Police Department, Lumet mercilessly indicts the corruption exposed by one rogue officer, in a story based on true events. Previously, The Hill (1965) had focused on a British prisoner of war camp and the brutal treatment of prisoners by sadistic guards, and just a few months before Serpico, Lumet released a British police thriller called The Offence (1973), starring Sean Connery as a violent police officer who kills a suspected child rapist while holding him in custody. With Serpico, Lumet becomes a defining chronicler of American institutional corruption, most obviously within the justice system. Though Lumet’s filmography had deepened considerably between his debut in 1957 with 12 Angry Men and Serpico, it is this 1973 effort that sets Lumet’s career on its most crucial trajectory. The film’s hero cop, Frank Serpico ( Al Pacino), suffers an identical injury after a drug bust goes awry, the facial gunshot leaving him deaf in one ear, stiff on his left side and given to occasional dizzy spells. Inside of a year, Wahlberg had been on the giving and receiving end of a gunshot to the identical part of the face in each gunshot’s anatomical location, the filmmakers pay homage to the defining outburst of sudden violence that characterizes Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973). Grusinsky survives the shooting, but bears the scar on his face after a lengthy recovery. The gunman raises his pistol and fires at Grusinsky, the bullet striking him in the cheekbone, just as Dignam’s bullet hit Sullivan. Late one evening, while Grusinsky is coming home with a bag of groceries, he is ambushed by a gunman wearing a bag over his head. This time, Wahlberg plays Captain Joseph Grusinsky, whose rough and tumble intimidation tactics irritate a group of ruthless Russian gangsters. The following year, Wahlberg would be on the other end of a gangland assassination attempt in James Gray’s We Own the Night (2007), a police thriller about two brothers on opposite sides of the law. Sullivan falls to the ground dead, and Dignam quietly leaves the apartment, his mission complete. He does not count on Dignam’s ambush dressed in a sweatsuit, Dignam raises a silenced pistol and fires at Sullivan, a bullet striking him in the cheekbone. Sullivan has effectively concealed his identity from his fellow officers, thinking that he has left no one alive who knows his true allegiance. ¿ STAX would love to see this flick but hopes Cruise's Beantown accent isn't as bad as his Irish one.In the final moments of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006), Boston police Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) lies in wait inside the apartment of a gangland informant who has risen through the ranks of the department, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). Why does my gut tell me that the filmmakers don't stand a good chance in getting him over Steven Spielberg? It should also be noted that the Boston press reported last year that local stars Mark and Donnie Wahlberg and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were being eyed for roles in The Winter Hill Gang but that might not be the case anymore with Cruise involved. Apparently, the alleged strong-arming done by the local Teamsters (and the political indifference that complaining producers were faced with) is now scaring off productions from wanting to shoot anywhere near the Bay State. The reason that condition is such a big problem is because there's a huge scandal involving the local Teamsters and the film productions that have come to Boston in the past this scandal is now under federal investigation. The production also apparently wants to film in Boston but that may become a sticking point. Cruise's option on Flowers' script expires in March so he needs to decide soon if he's joining The Winter Hill Gang or not. Alex Rocco appeared in the best crime drama ever set in Boston, 1973's The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Interestingly enough, Rocco's father is actor Alex Rocco, who hails from the Winter Hill Gang's home turf of Somerville, Mass. and it will be directed by Marc Rocco ( Murder in the First). The Winter Hill Gang was written by Massachusetts native David B. (Local legend has it that this war began over a woman.) Cruise would play the late gang lord Buddy McLean who threw down against his underworld rivals, the McLaughlin brothers. ![]() ![]() Over 60 hoods were slaughtered in a mob conflict that lasted from 1961-66 and is considered the worst gang war in the city's history. The Boston Herald reported today that Cruise is currently being wooed to star in The Winter Hill Gang, which is about Boston's infamous Irish mob war of the 1960's.
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