आलोचक समीक्षाएं

Shorta is a Molotov cocktail of a movie. For co-directors Ølholm and Hviid, it’s a Hollywood calling card. For the rest of us, it’s a tense actioner, anchored by powerful performances from its leads, who add layers to good cop/bad cop clichés.

The film is both a lurid urban thriller and an earnest parable about (almost literally) walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.

As effective as Enforcement is on a visceral level, it comes up short in any deeper reflection on the social crisis of its premise.

The film gives no reason for optimism in the urban warfare it portrays, but its heart, head and sharp eye are in exactly the right place.

A thriller that’s both a relentless adrenaline rush and a social-issue Rorschach test for all who watch it.

Enforcement, released as “Shorta” (Arabic slang for “cops”) in Europe, is a solid is slow-moving police actioner that reminds us that no matter the continent, police work is the same dangerous game. And that the world over, that “game” has entirely too many of the wrong sorts of people signing up.

Trouble lurks around every corner, and the narrative does keep us guessing, but this limits any sincere indictment of the apparently irresolvable us-and-them conflict. An arresting, often edge-of-your-seat action film, then, but not the enduring La Haine-inspired inspection of societal ills that it could have been.

The brawny Enforcement doesn’t shy away from brutal action, but the film is more in line with recent police thrillers like Deon Taylor’s “Black and Blue,” and Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” which fuse overt sociopolitical commentary with genre thrills.

There are plenty of heart-pumping moments, plus a fair few false notes, a couple of implausible coincidences and some exposition-y dialogue spelling out the film’s message, which is about how the two sides see each other.

And when the movie’s over, nothing is resolved that the filmmakers didn’t side-step or reduce to a few unconvincing symbols of hope for a more equitable future. You might like Enforcement if that’s a line you already want to buy; there’s otherwise not much here to change your mind.