Riveting film, and not dated at all

Rating: Null/10 (12 February 2002)

I have trouble watching most films from the 70s because they date themselves so badly, and because I despise 70s aesthetics and fashions. Here's a film that doesn't seem dated at all -- in fact, it seems ahead of its time in many ways. As far as I knew, crime films of this tone, with "bad guys" who are likeable, funny, and basically the guys next door didn't come around until Quentin Tarantino.
Besides content, 70s films bug me due to their generally dismal production values and terrible prints -- the print I saw of this film on the USA Network, though, was crystal clear (though unmatted). The dialogue track has a few creaky places production-wise, but visually the film could have been made last year, in terms of camera technique, editing, lighting (by contrast, I can't even watch "The Sting" (1973), with it's HORRID flat TV lighting), and so on. I guess what helps is that the movie was based on a true story (funny to see the credit "based on a magazine article by" ;^>), and the director was going for a very cinema verite approach. In this spirit, there is no music in the movie past the opening credits (and that song becomes one that's playing on the principals' radio), and this helps the movie attain its riveting tone and avoid becoming dated due to the soundtrack.
Other high points are of course the writing, Sidney Lumet's direction (I was not previously familiar with his work), and Al Pacino's always inspired acting. It's also neat to see the young Lance Henriksen (who looks surprisingly non-different from today's Lance Henriksen ;^>). The frank treatments of subjects like sex changes and the gay community (a term I would have assumed was coined more recently) are also interesting to see for a mainstream movie of this long ago.
Oh, if by any chance you're checking out this movie because you're a Carol Kane fan (my "Carol Kane" TiVo wishlist recorded the film for me), don't watch it solely for her -- she doesn't get to do much. There are plenty of other good reasons not to miss the film, though.