In a modest hotel room, Bobby Esposito and Cynthia Bennington, two young assistant district attorneys, have just made love for the first time. For the high-toned Bennington, the occasion is a breakthrough. "I've never had an orgasm before," she tells Esposito. He's pleased, but his mind is elsewhere. He's worried about inequities in the system.
"I've always been aware that there's a difference between the law andjustice," he says. "You know, it's not anybody's fault. There's no heavies here.They can be very different, very far apart, and I'm hoping somewhere in my lifeto bring the two closer together."
The chasm between justice and the Americanjustice system has emerged as the chief theme of 100 Centre Street, the new A&E series created by veteran film director Sidney Lumet. This has long been one of Lumet's preoccupations. His protagonists, idealists who start out fighting corruption, often end up enveloped or defeated by it. In the early episodes of 100 Centre Street--which will be rerun starting April 9--we encounter Esposito, played by a magnetic young actor named Joseph Lyle Taylor, near the beginning of the familiar Lumet trajectory: something of an innocent, still unsure who the enemy is.
Will his awakening be as painful as Frank Serpico's?It seems unlikely. Lumet's powerfully grim vision is already being diffused bythe demands of series television, like the need for tidy hourly resolutions. Theconvention of spotlighting different members of the series' cast in each episodehas also made for some disconcerting shifts in focus. Lumet himself wrote,directed, and produced the stellar two-hour premiere, but it hasn't helped thatmost of the episodes since have been the work of different writers and directors.
From NYPD Blue to Law and Order, other television law-enforcement dramas tend to celebrate the American criminal justice system, and especially the cops and prosecutors who lock up criminals. Set in Manhattan night court, 100 Centre Street has begun by adopting a more skeptical stance, even hinting at the argument of critical legal studies--that America's racial, class, and gender inequities are so embedded in the law that only a radical overhaul of the system can make it fair.
Lumet first won recognitionas a director in the 1950s for his live television dramas, and 100 CentreStreet's use of high-definition video technology--a more naturalistic medium than film--harks back to that era. The show is a throwback in other ways too: It eschews the mannered handheld camerawork of NYPD Blue and Homicide:Life on the Streets, as well as Blue's distinctive, at times almost undecipherable cop-speak. Centre Street's opening credits, accompanied by bluesy theme music, also have an old-fashioned feel.
In Lumet's urbanlandscape, cops tend to be dirty, prosecutors racist, outcomes rigged. Money,power, ethnic solidarity, and racial prejudice breed corruption. Any man--andLumet's heroes invariably have been men--who tries to wend his way through thismaze finds his job, his life, and, above all, his character on the line, withresults that range from triumphant to catastrophic.
In 12 Angry Men, Lumet's first feature film, a juror played by the ramrod-straight Henry Fonda is able to persuade his fellow jurors not to railroad an innocent man. In TheVerdict, Paul Newman as a washed-up, alcoholic attorney overcomes a double-crossing girlfriend and a corrupt judge to find both justice and personal redemption. Still, he ends up alone, without the girl.
Lumet's vision isdarker in his New York criminal justice trilogy, Serpico, Prince of theCity, and Q&A. In each film, a flawed man strives for the mantle of heroism in a fallen world--and is betrayed, embittered, and driven into cynicism or retreat. Witness Frank Serpico, raging and alone, then nearly murdered when his fellow cops fail to come to his aid. Or Danny Ciello, the cop who wears a wire in Prince of the City and is forced finally to rat out his best friends. Al Reilly, the young assistant district attorney in Q&A, is left after a prosecutorial cover-up with nowhere to go but a deserted island, where the woman he loves greets him in noncommittal silence.
In 100 CentreStreet, the system and its representatives remain deeply flawed. Right and wrong, left and right are not always easily distinguishable. Esposito, succumbing to family pressure, erases a conviction from court records to help his junkie brother Frank. Frank turns him in--with results that are still unfolding.
Judge Joseph Rifkind (the redoubtable Alan Arkin), an ex-cop with a wry senseof humor, cements his moniker of "Let 'em Go Joe" by releasing a young hood whogoes on to murder a rookie police officer. Rifkind's blunder--a result of bothhis own compassion and the revolving-door nature of the system--is made even morepainful by the fact that the victim is the daughter of his onetime partner.
After the murder, one of Rifkind's few backers is his friend and ideologicalopponent, Judge Attallah "Queenie" Sims, an African-American woman who isfearless and tough on crime. But Sims's toughness is no more proof againstdisaster than Rifkind's leniency. Thanks in part to a defense counsel'sincompetence, Sims sets unusually high bail for a first-time offender accused ina robbery and assault at a convenience store. In prison awaiting trial, theteenager is killed by far more vicious thugs.
Such plot developments can beall too predictable. But at its best, 100 Centre Street keeps us off balance, forcing us to examine our own assumptions about the way things work and the complexity of moral choices. After all, if the system is inherently unfair or even corrupt, how critical is it that we obey the law? In Bobby Esposito's position, obliged to decide whether to adhere to its tenets or give a brother a chance at rehabilitation, which would we choose?
That the system can grinddown even those it is designed to help is the point of an episode about AmandaDavis, a young black woman who is bipolar and homeless. Bennington, the Waspyprosecutor, takes Davis, the daughter of her former housekeeper, under her wing.But Bennington's attempts to escort her childhood friend through the obstaclecourse of the New York City welfare system are painful and revelatory. Benningtonends up exhausted and in tears--and Davis winds up back on the street, spoutingpoetry. The moral, once again, is voiced by Esposito. "I only know if you try torescue everybody," he tells Bennington, "you're the one who ends up gettinglost." Sounds as if his education is well under way--and hers, too.
Already 100 Centre Street has displayed some glimmers of insight into America's diversity and the perplexities that underlie it. Take the friendship between the two judges--Rifkind, the Jewish liberal, and Sims, the tough African American. It's a canny portrayal. Just when we're getting too comfortable with it, Lumet injects a jarring note: Although they've been dining partners on the job for years, Rifkind has never invited Sims to his apartment for a family meal.
It would be great if these discordant notes formed a tune--if 100 CentreStreet dissected in fine, entertaining detail how America's courts and legal apparatus fall short, or if the show allowed the mistakes made by Rifkind and Esposito to achieve tragic intensity. But the pressures of series television threaten to keep all this from happening. After a provocative start, 100Centre Street seems to be growing more formulaic and more improbable.
One episode centers on a media-savvy Vietnamese immigrant named Phan Van Trong whoholds Sims at gunpoint while demanding both a "network uplink" and the convictionof a former American soldier whose troops killed Trong's civilian family duringthe Vietnam War. Only on television would a judge with a gun at her head actuallytry to stage something that could pass for a fair trial. In this case, the"trial" dutifully rehearses familiar arguments about the plight of soldiers andcivilians in a guerrilla war without clear battle lines.
Sims issues a not-guilty verdict, and her assailant, after an abortive suicide attempt, iscaptured and read his rights. Later Rifkind asks Sims whether she everentertained finding against the American--presumably to keep herself from beingshot. No, Sims replies, adverting to the law: "The people didn't prove their casebeyond a reasonable doubt."
Seems to be an affirmation of the system, right? Fortunately, the episode doesn't stop there. It shows Sims reentering thedarkened courtroom and replaying the old news videotape showing the shooting inVietnam. In the chaos of war, innocent people undoubtedly were killed--even ifthe question of guilt remains elusive. The episode ends on Sims's troubledvisage, as she ponders the nagging gap between law and justice. It's a redemptivemoment, for Sims and for 100 Centre Street.