Charismatic small-time thief Bobby (a terrific and electric performance by Al Pacino) meets and falls in love with the dejected Helen (superbly played with aching vulnerability by Kitty Winn). Their lives fall apart and start to spiral out of control due to their mutual addiction to heroin. Director Jerry Schatzberg wisely uses a plain and unadorned naturalistic style for maximum authenticity, makes excellent and evocative use of grungy New York City locations, and vividly captures a harrowing sense of raw desperation. The hard-hitting script by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne pulls zero punches in its stark and nihilistic depiction of the bleak reality of drug addiction in which people willingly debase themselves for the sake of a fix and rat out their friends to the cops in order to avoid doing time in jail. The doomed codependent romantic relationship between the two damaged main characters gives this film a heart-wrenching poignancy while the uncompromising downbeat ending packs a devastating punch. Moreover, the uniformly fantastic acting by the top-drawer cast rates as another substantial asset: Pacino and Winn are first-rate in the lead roles, plus there are praiseworthy supporting contributions from Alan Vint as browbeating narc Hotch, Richard Bright as Bobby's slimy no-count hustler brother Hank, Kiel Martin as the strung-out Chico, Warren Finnerty as the fidgety Sammy, and Raul Julia as struggling artist Marco. Joe Santos and Paul Sorvino pop up in small roles . Adam Holender's no-frills cinematography further enhances the gritty documentary-style realism. An absolute powerhouse.

One problem with this film lies with how it's structured; to me it has a very 'episodic' feel about it whereby it seemed to be filmed in lots of short segments and each segment gradually moves the story along. You may think at this point 'Hey what's wrong with that?' That's how a normal narrative works - yes it is, but the problem with this film lay outside the basic narrative.Another big problem with this film lies with its very poor development of characters; Bobby & Helen are the two main characters and throughout the entire running time we learn very little about them. As mentioned there are lots of little scenes between Bobby and Helen, but the writers never allow us to learn much about them meaning that you always feel as though the writers are keeping Bobby and Helen at arms length from you. The same thing can be said of the story and due to the rather 'episodic' nature of the film, I found that the writers tended to move from scene to scene without really developing the characters or offering any real commentary. I expected the film to be thought-provoking, insightful or perhaps even moving, but I honestly felt cold & unattached from the film as a whole. Characters one minute would be at death's door (Bobby's OD'ing scene) and then in the next scene they would be fine giving the audience nothing to reflect upon. Aside from Al Pacino's OD'ing scene I never felt as though the characters were suffering from the effects of drugs and never felt as though they were in much danger - which again just made me more and more uninvolved as the film progressed.The only positives I can draw from this film come from the performances of Al Pacino and Kitty Win who clearly did the best that they could with what they had to work with. I really disliked this film and the rather abrupt ending was also quite strange. Requiem for a Dream is a much better film tackling a similar theme and you'd be better served watching that film.

Jerry Schatzberg's grim film about junkies circa 1971 New York has become something of a classic due in large part to the fact that it contains Al Pacino's first starring role. Pacino is indeed a dynamo as Bobby, a heroin addict and petty crook (he's better at being a junkie than he is at stealing). He's well matched with Kitty Winn as his girlfriend, a free-spirited would-be artist who also succumbs to shooting up. It's so extremely realistic d and shot on the same grimy NYC streets as Paul Morrissey's TRASH, that it's sometimes hard to believe a film crew was even at work. Pacino & Winn are excellent and so is Richard Bright as Pacino's entrepreneurial brother (he's a pusher who wears a suit and tie). Raul Julia, Alan Vint (perfect as a duplicitous narc) and Kiel Martin co-star. Winn won the best actress award at Cannes. The script is by John Gregory Dunne & Joan Didion.

The Panic in Needle Park is a 1971 American film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino in his second film appearance. The screenplay was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, adapted from the book by James Mills.The story of a rather empty and silly girl with no life who hooks up with a charming loser junkie somehow comes off as the eternal love story. Bobby (Pacino) and Helen (Kitty Winn) meet through the pretentious Mexican artist Marco (Raúl Juliá), Helen's boyfriend, a man so narcissistic he would rather score drugs from Bobby than worry about Helen's back alley abortion, leaving her bleeding on the floor of his studio while he scouts for blow – ironically leading to her turning to Bobby for support and romance.Shot in the cinéma vérité-style without any music whatsoever, many passerbys look straight at the camera – this is a documentary, with Winn and Pacino sliding into the world that existed in Needle Park in the 70′s – Needle Park being Sherman Square and surrounds, named for the amount of heroin users jones'ing about the area. Pacino improvises with a tall African pimp on the street, " I got nothing'" he says, with a quick smile as he bowls along 72nd Street. They sit on a kerb, Bobby wearing a headscarf like an old peasant woman, cold and bored as feet rush by their noses. New York seems utterly futile and flat – with no hope for the likes of these underachievers.Thought to be the first movie in which full-on real drug injection is seen, this is as stark as it gets – but there's no humor or irony here as in Spun or Pulp Fiction. This is nasty, bleak, boring drug-taking with nothing people in void lives. New York is grim, sludgy with old snow; cold and gray. The addicts live in an alternate reality like ghosts as commuters go about their day – they only see each other as if anyone not on heroin is invisible.The Panic is a term used to describe a drought of supply – and there's a big shortage coming. But also The Panic is about their habit. As Bobby is "chipping" – a term to mean using recreationally – he develops a $50 a day habit – and this, so his brother, the burglar Hank (Richard Bright) tells him, is going to be an issue. Where's the money going to come from? What if he can't get a fix? Helen, bored of waiting for Bobby, gauched out in bed for hours on end when she wants sex, starts using too. Their relationship is so distant despite their close proximity 24 hours a day that Bobby doesn't notice straight away, only seeing her eyes eventually and asking " When did that happen?" Of course, it's not long before Helen is addicted too – and takes a job as a waitress to support their habit. Obviously a junkie waitress isn't going to do too well, and she quickly turns to hooking to make the vast amount of cash they need to sustain their drug bingeing.Performances are straight A all round, with Pacino turning in the performance that landed him The Godfather, and Winn was awarded Best Actress at Cannes that year, going on to star as Sharon Spencer, Regan's tutor in The Exorcist.Some ratings boards gave this film an X rating, such as in Germany and Britain, leading onto a spate of X-rated movies such as A Clockwork Orange and Deliverance. For me, it's the truth that lies inside the screenplay that makes this an X-rated movie – that there are people out there who live like this – a prostitute hides her baby in the toilet with Helen and Bobby, who is at that moment OD'ing and puking in the bowl, so she can let in her john for his appointment; Helen and Bobby find it funny when they rob a young guy after her turning a trick with him. They beat each other, cheat on each other, steal from each other – and yet they stick together like glue.There's obvious comparison to Requiem For A Dream, but this is even more bleak and realistic – these people aren't charming or good-looking or even interesting – there's no poetry. The co-dependency is so strong that Helen freaks and runs to the streets searching for Bobby when she wakes up alone in the apartment they share. They writhe on dirty old blankets in moldy rented rooms and pass out in greasy street diners. The neon sign " Drugs" hangs red through the window as Bobby consoles Helen with banana cake when she comes down.A terrible scene where a puppy dies – which reminded me of the Apocalypse Now puppy that disappears after the shoot-out on the boat and makes me cry every time. Even when a narcotics cop Hotch (the late Alan Vint) takes a fancy to Helen and tries to help her, it seems out of lust rather than any genuine care for her situation – because who cares about these rotten souls? And that is why the movie keeps on turning like a horrible carousel to the very end – without each other, Bobby and Helen would not even exist.A destroying watch.