A cop is turning. Nobody's safe.


nspired by a true story, Prince of the City stars Treat Williams as a Manhattan detective who agrees to help the US Department of Justice weed out corruption in the NYPD. Williams agrees on the assurance that he'll never have to turn in a close friend. Wired for sound, Williams almost immediately stumbles upon a police conspiracy to smuggle narcotics to street informants in order to insure cooperation. While this might be condonable in a stretch, the fact is that the many cops are using the drugs on their own, and are also highly susceptible to bribes. Williams gets the goods on the miscreants, but in so doing he breaks the "code" and becomes a pariah to his fellow officers. As we learn in the unsettling final scene, Williams will always be considered a "fink," even by honest cops. Prince of the City is too long for its own good, but its opening expository sequences and its final twenty minutes more than compensate for the duller stretches.


Prince of the City (1981) is an American crime drama film about an NYPD officer who chooses to expose police corruption for idealistic reasons. The character of Daniel Ciello (played by Treat Williams) was based on real-life NYPD Narcotics Detective Robert Leuci[1] and the script was based on Robert Daley's 1978 book of the same name. The film was directed by Sidney Lumet and also featured Jerry Orbach.
Prince of the City was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but lost to On Golden Pond.


The film was considered authentic enough by the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration that he called Lumet for a copy of the movie for the DEA training program. Some law enforcement officials, however, criticized the film for glamorizing Leuci and other corrupt detectives while portraying most of the prosecutors who uncovered the crimes negatively.[11] John Guido, Chief of Inspectional Services said, "The corrupt guys are the only good guys in the film."[11] Nicholas Scoppetta, the Special Prosecutor who helped convince Leuci to go undercover against his fellow officers, said, "In the film, it seems to be the prosecutors who are disregarding the issue of where real justice lies and the prosecutors seem to be as bad or worse than the corrupt police."[11] In fact, only two of the five prosecutors the film focuses on were portrayed negatively. In particular District Attorney Polito, played by James Tolkan, is shown as petty and vindictive. The character is based on Thomas P. Puccio, the assistant United States Attorney in charge of the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn, and Robert Daley agrees that he was treated unfairly in the screenplay.
Interestingly, one of the prosecutors who befriended the Ciello character and is shown in a very positive light was based on then rookie federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani. The character, Mario Vincente, played by Steve Inwood, is portrayed as threatening to resign if the U.S. Attorney's office indicts Ciello (Leuci) for past transgressions. In general, the prosecutors who argued against the prosecution of Leuci are treated sympathetically, while those who sought his indictment are shown as officious and vindictive.
The initial release of Prince of the City garnered both positive and negative reviews, some the latter complaining of what was considered its excessive length. The film was not commercially successful in its theatrical release. The film currently (December 2010) scores a 94% (among 16 reviews) on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Release Date: August 21, 1981


Distrib: Warner Brothers


Boxoffice: $8,124,257 2013: $23,525,300