by Tony Dayoub
One [year] ago, cinema lost director Sidney Lumet, "a leading American realist," according to David Thomson in his essay, "The Fugitive Kind: When Sidney Went to Tennessee." Thomson describes Lumet as "a master of complex working situations, of limited time and space, of plot intrigue, of real-life settings and natural drama." I'd add that Lumet was fascinated by iconoclasts and how they confronted injustice. In movie after movie, his heroes often found themselves at odds with societal norms despite the fact that they tended to stick to a moral code that society had itself established. Whether it was Juror Number 8 (Henry Fonda) in 12 Angry Men, the eponymous cop (Al Pacino) of Serpico, or producer Max Schumacher (William Holden) in Network, the protagonist demanded fairness while ensconced in a corrupted system that had long ago abandoned the notion. One finds this recurring theme in some form or another in all of Lumet's films.
