The film is the most ambitious, realistic, thorough and scrupilous feature yet released by a major studio on the subject of cops and corruption.

Director Sidney Lumet is in firm control of the sprawling canvas, showing in spades his ability to harness intense energy and almost uniformly top-rate performances from a cannily-cast stable of solid character actors.

An astonishing in-depth portrait of the interlocking worlds of police and hoodlum results, with no punches pulled and no easy solutions.

You could do far worse when looking for a mobbed-up crime drama, but we’ve been spoiled by far better.