The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

	Directed by: Jerry Schatzberg	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Panikk i Needle Park RUNNING TIME 110 minutes
	Produced by: Dominick Dunne
	Written by (based on the 1966 novel by James Mills): Joan Didion John Gregory Dunne

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Bobby	Al Pacino
Helen Reeves	Kitty Winn	½
Detective Hotch	Alan Vint	½
Hank	Richard Bright	½
Chico	Kiel Martin	-
Sonny	Michael McClanathan	-
Sammy	Warren Finnerty	-
Marcie	Marcia Jean Kurtz	-
Marco	Raul Julia	-
Samuels	Paul Sorvino	-

Review

A New York document from the filthy, crime-ridden 1970s and its burgeoning scene of heroin addiction. With its bleak, often uneventful social realism, this film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and written by Joan Didion and her spouse John Gregory Dunne almost feels and looks European. The storytelling is bumpy and the editing abrupt, but you do get a sense of life on the fringes, if not exactly the full effects of the drug itself. Al Pacino and Kitty Winn's lead performances are the picture's driving force. They are effortful, naturalistic and almost unpolished.