A year before Al Pacino got his career role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather he and Kitty Winn got great reviews as a pair of junkies in The Panic In Needle
Park. This film is a brutal and realistic look at the New York's nasty world of the
narcotics addict as seen through Pacino and Winn.
Even in this world romance can bloom even among these folks on the bottom
most rung of society. Still the need for the needle overrules all, a fact that
narcotics cop like Jesse Vint exploits to the max.
Richard Bright who plays Pacino's older brother who is a burglar by trade and
not a junkie delivers a good performance. My one criticism of he Panic In
Needle Park is Bright's willingness to take Pacino in on a job. Any good burglar
wouldn't rust a junkie even if he was family.
The scenes showing the heroin use are brutally realistic. One scene that jolted
me was the efforts to save Pacino from a hot shot dose of pure heroin. Done
by his fellow narcotics peers without any professional medical help.
Not much has changed in the junkie world in the intervening half a century since Needle Park came out. The real tragedy of this film.
