Cielo was trash. I liked the movie a lot but I hated Cielo's guts during most of the film. He was a Rat-Snitch who sold out the people who cared about him and trusted him. I don't care if you have guilt, deal with it like a man. Don't ruin peoples lives that love and care about you. RAT...
shareSometimes we have to do things we don't wanna do, it's part of life.
shareWith or without Ciello/Leucci they were going to try to end the corruption in the police department. The French Connection ripoff was just a symptom of the institutional corruption. And, Serpico covered that very well.
As for Ciello, in the movie he was trying to be a good guy. He was ashamed of being corrupt. Rocky told him, he was nothin but a f^*&#$! worrier. That's what he was in all that trouble for.
If he had been a sociopath like the rest of the hoods and criminal cops, he would have never been bothered by any of it.
In the end, when it was obvious that they were going to get everybody in SIU, Ciello did what he could to save his friends.
Like I have said before; From cocky cop to bleeding gums, Treat Williams leads the character thru an amazing transition.
I don't know why he did what he did. I'm not convinced Ciello made an "amazing transition." Maybe his reasons were more pragmatic. I'm not willing to say he's "trying to be a good guy."
"He sent the rain."
"Who sent the fire?"
Ciello as a person in real life aside, I thought Williams' performance in 'transition' was basically the glue of the film. Everything centered around him being able to pull off that character, which I thought he did incredibly.
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Wait a minute... who am I here?
People I know in the NYPD who knew Leuci, the man the Cielo character was based on, agree with the OP. He was (to quote Dave DiBenedetto) "a rat-ph/uk and a punk" who knew the division was going down & betrayed his partners to get the best deal for himself.
I'd trust the men who worked with him as providing a more accurate picture than the movie's creative team.
So, you'd prefer that cops sell criminals their freedom, let drug dealers go free in exchange for cash, buy grand jury transcripts for criminals, set up illegal wiretaps, and otherwise help subvert the system?
Hmmm. Guess law and order don't mean that much to some people.
Sure, the system is riddled with corruption at every level. The fact that a cop came forward (and no lawyer, judge or D.A. ever has) says something about cops.
Before you judge Leuci too harshly, you might want to read his memoir, "All the Centurions." It's also a good idea to read Robert Daley's non-fiction book "Prince of the City."
I find the prosecutor Polito, and Santomasino, to be much more repulsive than Ciello.
We report, you decide; but we decide what to report.
I really didn't understand Cielo at all. The way I saw it, was he wasn't forced to be a rat - his life and freedom weren't in jeopardy. He chose to and enjoyed it in the beginning like it was an "effing game" as he called it. The most important things in his life were his family & his partners, so why did he put both in jeopardy like that?! So he wanted to come clean himself and be a clear-cut "good guy". To me, it came off as a cheating spouse who gets away w/ cheating and then decides to tell their spouse about the affair as a selfish way to clear their own conscience when in the end all it does is hurt the other person. If they were going after crooked D.A.s who got paid to get criminals off or dirty cops - such as planting evidence or taking bribes, than that's one thing. But what was so bad that these guys did - skimmed a little? Most of them had families & probably weren't getting paid much as they risked thier lives every day and spent more hours w/ their partners than their kids b/c that's what they had to do. They didn't take bribes or turn criminals loose - they did their jobs and went after the bad guys, and they didn't even keep all the money or drugs they came into - and they weren't handing out kilos of drugs to dealers; they gave out small baggies in order to get valuable information that would lead to real criminals getting caught. At one point the cops are questioned about a lousy $400 a convicted drug dealer says they took from him, even though they turned down a $5,000 bribe to let him go! Good & bad just isn't that black & white & simple. Who hasn't cut corners or taken something on the job before?! I don't see the harm in what they did - there's far worse corruption, not to mention crime on the streets to deal w/ rather than waste all that time & effort on this, imo.
Cielo swears up & down he won't sell out his partners. He even tells Gus they'd have to cut him apart before he tells anything, and then almost immediately turns around and sings like a canary. The one partner was only 2 mos. from his pension! His other buddies shot themselves and even his cousin got whacked, and for what? I like the way Gus handled it all, when he says that he ain't doing it anyone's way but his own and that he has all these indictments waiting on tape, and not one of them is a cop. Maybe Cielo wanted to have his cake & eat it too by being a rat and not wanting to rat out his parnters, but he was very naive to get involved at all, and I really had no respect for him by the end of the movie. I'd have walked out on him at the end too!
"Are you going to your grave with unlived lives in your veins?" ~ The Good Girl
Those scenes towards the beginning of the film - the difficult to watch ones where you see him helping out junkies and how terrible things were for him and them, etc. - I think those scenes were there to show you how he was finally realizing the (to him) terrible life he was leading... he just couldn't go on like that, and made his decision to change things at that point.
Not saying I agree or disagree with it, just how I saw his character 'change' while watching the film.
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Wait a minute... who am I here?
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If there were more people like him world would be a better place. You say rat as if its a bad thing.
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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing.