Police, Adjective

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Audience Member Was there a Romanian New Wave in the Oughties? I'm only just catching up. Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) and Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) were both great ultra-realist tales showing the bleak state of life in Romania. Corneliu Porumboiu's 2009 film follows Puiu by taking a black comedic look at present day post-communist Romania, specifically the (role of the) police force. Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a moody undercover cop who is tailing a couple of high school students who are smoking hashish; one of them has informed on the other. Cristi's preference is not to bust the suspect because the jail sentence would be too steep and he doesn't want to ruin the kid's life (which otherwise seems normal and upper middle class). His supervisor and the local prosecutor think otherwise. But Cristi keeps stalling - the film shows us an endless stakeout, ridiculous leads being followed up, and, of course, the relentless bureaucratic nature of police work. At home, Cristi and his school-teacher wife discuss grammar. Suspense builds up because nothing is happening (this is again a hyper-realistic anti-thriller). And then, when Cristi is finally called into the supervisor's office, the coup-de-grace is an amazing scene where the dictionary is consulted and read out to determine whether Cristi has the right to follow his "conscience" (but sneakily, and more importantly, we are led to contemplate whether "police" is a noun or an adjective). In this one scene, my brain was tickled into considering Cristi's actions and those of the supervisor in a different light and, without missing a beat, the film resolves as you didn't think it would (or did you?). At this point, you can cast your eye back across the film and decide that it was indeed a comedy. Or was it? Maybe not if you live in Romania. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Chilling how persuasive the boss was yet still he is missing something his employee gets. There isn't much action but I enjoyed the movie, even, the waiting parts, because they were so real. The lady with the frisky dog, the secretary typing etc so real it made it fascinating. A movie about symbols, semantics, dialectics, individual morality vs the law and the price of choosing one over the other should they collide. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Audience Member Master piece of how to tell a simple but deep story in the best and more realistic way. Well chosen cast, really good staging, dialogues and performance. A really good movie. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Audience Member It's very boring, they filmed everything. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member It's not an easy sit through, that's for sure, but it's rewarding in the end. I personally like slow-paced films. This one might seem a bit over the top to some people (completely understandable) but it deals with an issue similar to that of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. which is the more righteous task: following the law under all circumstances or doing what's best for the victim? Or in this case, the offender. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Si le gars a voulu montrer que le boulot d'un flic en Roumanie c'à (C)tait chiant, alors c'est rà (C)ussi au-delà de toutes attentes ! Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Police, Adjective

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