Sidney Lumet passed away over the weekend and while you'll find far better coverage of his career and body of work elsewhere, I thought it fitting to zero in on some of his crime films here. After all, over five decades of work, Lumet put together a significant list of credits that ought to include more than a couple of highlights for crime film fans (with his yen for themes of institutional, personal and familial corruption and a habit of working with or from material from top-notch writers, how could he not?)

Lumet's debut 12 Angry Men spotlit his knack for creating, building and sustaining high tension that he kept, honed and tweaked all the way through to his final film - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - which showed the artist operating with the control of a master and the verve of an up and comer, but was it ever more present or well used than the entire two hour running time of Dog Day Afternoon? That film has got to be the template for jeez, every(?) heist movie that ever followed. 

Of course, his other big Al Pacino collaboration was another true-crime adaptation, Serpico from the book Serpico by Peter Maas and Frank Serpico which again, yeah, is there any undercover cop movie or whistle-blower film that followed that didn't lift something from that one? The dilemmas of shady cops who want to maintain their souls were revisited in The Offence - (one of five collaborations with Sean Connery),  Prince of the City and Q&A, (from the book by Edwin Torres). The Prince of the City author, Robert Daley also wrote the novel Tainted Evidence, the basis for Lumet's underrated film Night Falls on Manhattan, while his David Mamet/Paul Newman vehicle The Verdict and the perhaps most surprisingly good film on his credit list Find Me Guilty, (seriously, did you know Vin Diesel could act?), round out my recommendations from his legal canon.

He adapted work by playwrights Tennessee Williams, (The Fugitive Kind), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey into Night) and Anton Chekov (The Sea Gull), as well as novelists ranging from E.L. Doctorow (Daniel) and John le Carre (The Deadly Affair) to Lawrence Sanders (The Anderson Tapes) and Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express). (And can you call his re-make of the John Cassevetes' film Gloria with Sharon Stone in the Gena Rowlands role an adaptation? Maybe you should.) No matter what way you slice it that at least speaks to a good eye for material and artistic ambition however varied and uneven the results.

Did he always hit the mark? Nuh-uh. But he kept getting up there and taking some really exciting swings. And when he connected... it was sweet. Hmmm... Think I'll catch up with Running on Empty this week.

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.

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