After being dumped by her scumbag boyfriend and procuring an
abortion, a naïve young woman (Kitty Winn) takes up with a heroin addicted
street hustler (Al Pacino) who hangs out in the titularly dubbed Upper West Side
neighborhood where other addicts congregate. Soon she herself is using, whoring
herself out, and fighting drug charges with her new beau. Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park, with a
screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne from a novel by James Mills,
seems to really know and understand its urban junkie turf, but suffers from its
own persistence at realism and grows incredibly wearisome after a while. Pacino
is strong and completely credible in his debut leading screen performance and
Winn, unfortunately, is not.
** 1/2 out of ****
