“There’s a strange bond that sometimes exists between law enforcement officers and criminals. They both live by codes of honour and respect more stringent than most normal people. And there’s a certain psychological connection there.”
That’s one of the cops of this piece, inadvertently revealing the police psyche as we see it plain as day today.
It’s symptomatic of a documentary that’s lacking in imagination or self-reflection in the way it presents the pretty technical ins and outs of how the US Attorney’s Office cracked their case against the five Mafia families that more-or-less ran New York City in the 1970s and ’80s.
I bring up self-reflection because when Rudy Giuliani shows up the second act, despite my knowing the story can’t be told without him, I did consider flipping to the Mob’s side. And when you-know-who rears his ugly head, I was almost rooting for the wise guys to take a little more off the top.
(Ordinarily I wouldn’t record TV here, as that’s what Trakt is for, but since this ’Netflix Limited Series’ is barely two-and-a-half hours in total, I suspect it was a feature that was chopped up to boost its appeal given the habits of the medium’s subscriber base.) ★★½
Cross-posted from Letterboxd