This is great acting from a great actor, with a great script and an inspirational theme.
In this scene, Al Pacino defends a young man who is being made a scapegoat for several others, a young man you had the honor to ‘fess up, and take his lumps.
Pacino’s character shows the hypocrisy of the situation, that the honorable one will be destroyed while the cowardly dishonorable ones would go unpunished.