Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Ian (Flash Review)This hyper-real feeling portrayal of life as a heroin junky is a tough and sorrow-filled viewing. This appears to be Pacino's 2nd film (my key reason for watching it) and he plays a young man hooked on heroin who is also a small-time burglar to help pay for his habit. This film is also a depressing romance as a young, apparently homeless girl, meets Pacino and believe it or not finds stability in him! He gets her hooked and they share emotional ups and downs which is pretty much the focus of the film. It also shines a light into people addicted to this drug, which could easily be a PSA for stay away from drugs yet keeps a documentary angle rather than trying to get you to feel bad for them. This films also showed the most authentic-feeling scene of a man doing heroin. So authentic feeling, I thought he was actually doing the drug or studied addicts very carefully. Pretty heavy scene with gradation of phases rather than your Hollywood, quick needle poke and euphoric zone out. Grainy and grimy, this film is heavy and well-acted and is hard to forget.

MartinHafer "The Panic in Needle Park" is an incredibly unpleasant film...which is what you'd expect about a film that centers around two heroin addicts living in New York. So, if you are looking for a film to make you smile or a good date film, do NOT see this movie! In fact, that is the biggest problem with the picture...most folks won't wanna see two people slowly destroying themselves. Most folks watch films to be entertained. Now I am NOT saying it's a bad film and it might be a good one to show teens, as it shows how wretched a life hooked on drugs can be...though there are a few more recent films which make drug use seem a lot more unpleasant, such as the brilliant but hard to watch "Requiem for a Dream".The film has very little in the way of plot. It simply shows two addicts who are in love, Bobby and Helen (Al Pacino and Kitty Winn), as they slowly degenerate...sinking lower and lower and lower through the course of the movie. At first, Bobby is very glib...and fun to be with and Helen seems rather innocent. Naturally, this doesn't last and both sink deeper and deeper into their habit. Bobby claims he's a 'chipper' (a casual user who is not addicted) but after a while he's dealing and overdoses. Helen begins turning tricks to buy their next fix. Unpleasant, to be sure, but mostly realistic. When they shot up, it looks real...and the language is street language...nasty and crude. But the only problem I saw is that both LOOKED healthy through the course of the film and the makeup could have been better...enabling them not only to act like addicts but to look more like them. Well made but I am strongly warning you...it's not a movie for kids or for the squeamish.

dougdoepke The storyline's about as close to two hours of sheer futility that I've seen. One thing—don't see it if you're at all depressed; I think I counted two smiles from actress Winn the entire time. But then she and fellow junkie Bobby (Pacino) have little to be happy about. Sure, they love each other, at least during their sober moments. But those moments are really just preludes to shooting up again. All in all, life's a teeter-totter ride. So which is going to win out— love or dependency. It's a harrowing descent for Helen (Winn). She starts off conventionally enough, until Bobby's fast life pulls her into sharing his heroin addiction. Then it's a treadmill to nowhere, from getting money by any means to feeding the never-ending bodily demand. Thus, the lovers can never be sure who's talking—the affectionate person, or the drug's long shadow. At the same time, trust in others can never be a certainty, even among lovers. It's a grim portrait of human relationships, to say the least.In my book, Winn deserves some kind of award for winning us over with troubled vulnerability. Thus, her tumble into personal desolation pulls us along. Pacino too is outstanding, though not nearly as sympathetic. Still, the way he maneuvers among the jungle of addicts and drug money is totally convincing. I can see why the role launched his A-picture career. Also, the NY city locations lend a further sense of realism, though I could have used more of the down-and-out street characters.Overall, I suspect PiNP is the best movie made about the seductive ravages of hard drugs. In fact, I think I'll open my medicine cabinet and check the prescription drugs.

Cate Baum 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.