Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 2, 2024

While his name may be sadly underrecognized by younger viewers in particular, Sidney Lumet had one of the most august directorial careers in midcentury and beyond film history. Very few directors have had the overall success Lumet achieved over decades of film making, and the sheer breadth of the material he helped to shape cinematically is truly mind boggling. 12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Pawnbroker, Fail Safe, Child's Play, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus , The Wiz (okay, everyone deserves a mulligan), Deathtrap and The Verdict are just some of the efforts Lumet helmed. Wow. Lumet only had a handful more of films to shepherd to completion after 1996's Night Falls on Manhattan, and if this outing is almost unavoidably elegiac in tone, it still offers some outstanding performances and a story that touches on several themes that interested Lumet throughout his long career, including the vagaries of "morality" in the law and order community.

Liam Casey (Ian Holm) and Joey Allegretto (Gandolfini) are two hardscrabble New York Police Department detectives on a stakeout as the film opens. Casey has the jitters that something may go wrong in their undercover efforts to track a nefarious drug dealer named Jordan Washington (Shiek Mahmud-Bey), but Allegretto kind of half jokingly states he (i.e., Allegretto) is too stupid to ever worry about anything. And of course things go spectacularly awry almost instantly, with the (no pun intended) upshot being Casey is seriously wounded and other police actually end up dead. Washington is ultimately arrested for the maelstrom, and in a surprise development, District Attorney Morgenstern (Ron Liebman) appoints Casey's Assistant District Attorney son Sean (Andy Garcia) to oversee the prosecution of Washington.

What ensues is a typically labyrinthine plot (it's notable Lumet also adapted Robert Daley's source novel in addition to directing) that ultimately takes a number of "moral shades of gray" twists and turns as Washington's defense attorney Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss) squares off against Sean in the courtroom. Rather interestingly, and especially given the "hindsight" of Lumet's work on 12 Angry Men, there's absolutely no doubt about Washington's guilt in the case (even Vigoda doesn't argue with that fact), but that turns out to be almost a (no courtroom pun intended) sidebar to the real subtext of cops on the dole and other questionable behaviors from law and order types we typically look to provide examples of what being fine upstanding citizens looks like.

Night Falls on Manhattan does a rather good job of ripping the bandaid off of perceptions about police and the district attorney's office, and in fact its deconstruction of New York City's Democratic "machine" seemed pretty spot on in my personal estimation, as I discuss in my closing comments, below. The film probably does less well in terms of managing an increasingly wide array of subplots, including a probably needless "romantic interest" angle between Sean and one of Vigoda's cohort, Peggy Lindstrom (Lena Olin).

Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Night Falls on Manhattan is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

Night Falls on Manhattan has been exclusively restored by Arrow Films and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with original stereo and 5.1 audio.

The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution at Fotokem. The film was graded and restored in 2K at Dragon DI, Wales.

The stereo and 5.1 mixes were sourced from Paramount. Additional audio remastering was completed by Porsteinn Gislason.

All materials sourced for this restoration were made available by Paramount.

This transfer offers a really secure accounting of a naturalistic but still frankly slightly glossy take on some New York locations. While in his commentary track Lumet may point out little touches of "reality" like boxes stacked in the room where the Assistant District Attorneys are getting some instruction, there's still Lumet's typical production expertise with regard to things like cinematography. Lumet was of course used to films of his being set in the courtroom (the supplementary documentary has him discussing what he thought of as the "no problem" issue of 12 Angry Men taking place almost entirely in a jury anteroom), and detail levels in these interior scenes in particular is typically excellent, even in some midrange framings. Some of the outdoor location work may not fare quite as well, with a kind of blue undertone at times that can suck fine detail out of the image, at least minimally. Some of this same slightly blue quality can also pervade interior shots as well. There are still some almost minute signs of age related wear and tear that have made it through the restoration gauntlet. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Night Falls on Manhattan features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 options. The surround track noticeably opens up another gorgeous, noir inflected score by Mark Isham (I instantly knew this was an Isham score even before seeing the credits, in kind of the same way another classic film composer who included jazz idioms, Henry Mancini, is almost instantly identifiable when I hear his music). Some of the urban locations and even the courtroom scenes can offer at least intermittent engagement of the side and rear channels for background ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries

  Commentary by Sidney Lumet

  
  

  Commentary by Andy Garcia, Ron Leibman, Josh Kramer & Thom Mount

• The Directors: Sidney Lumet (HD; 59:40) stems from 2002 and offers a glut of good interviews while providing a career overview (up to that point) of Lumet's astounding filmography.


• On Set Interviews

  Interview with Andy Garcia (HD; 3:30)

  
  

  Interview with Richard Dreyfuss (HD; 2:46)

  
  

  Interview with Lena Olin (HD; 2:01)

  
  

  Interview with Ian Holm (HD; 3:12)

  
  

  Interview with Ron Leibman (HD; 4:53)

  
  

  Interview with Sidney Lumet (HD; 5:26)

• Behind the Scenes (HD; 12:47)


• Trailer Gallery

  Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:06)

  
  

  TV Spots (HD; 1:33)

Additionally, Arrow provides an unusually interesting insert booklet with new writing by Nick Clement along with some original Production Notes and a rather fascinating statement from Lumet, where he defends his repeated trips to the police/general law enforcement corruption well by saying the problem is only getting worse. The keepcase features a reversible sleeve and also encloses a folded mini poster. Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

Night Falls on Manhattan Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Vis a vis some depictions of political "machines" in New York City and how they operate, I can tell you from personal experience Night Falls on Manhattan can at least accurately hint at some of the, well, machinations party structures can engage in, as one of my uncles was a mover and shaker in New York's Democratic Party and in fact headed campaigns for some rather notable figures including one scion of a famous (as with several characters in the film) Irish American New York political family whose members included a governor, mayor and President of New York's City Council. Somewhat hilariously, at least for those who may be familiar with the actually kind of sordid history of the Democratic Party in New York (not that the Republicans were any better, mind you), this uncle lived in an apartment complex which backed to the old Tammany Hall Building. If Lumet had concentrated on one of his favorite subtexts, namely moral shades of gray and especially those shades within (to extend a metaphor) the "thin blue line" and its Law and Order prosecutorial arm(s), the film might have had more impact. You can feel Lumet aiming for the same kind of almost caustic analysis of modern society that he offered with regard to media in Network, but never quite getting there. Still, this offers some really outstanding performances and the story, while ultimately kind of rote, especially within the context of Lumet's own filmography, has elements of visceral impact. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very enjoyable. Recommended.