Police

French director Maurice Pialat mixes his usual approach of dialogue- heavy improvisation and his own slightly twisted sense of 'realism' with the police procedural genre. Anchoring Police is the formidable Gerard Depardieu playing Inspector Mangin, a chunky pitbull of a man who mixes charm, playfulness and violence together as he plays his way through the crime-fighting game with equal amounts of efficiency and carelessness. Pialat's camera, loose and restless, seems fascinated by him, and Depardieu's performance devours the film, overshadowing the director's themes of loneliness and criminality in France.

The first two-thirds of Police are it's best, as Mangin is caught up investigating a bunch of Tunisian drug-dealing criminals, and has his eye caught by the doe-eyed and beautiful Noria (Sophie Marceau), the girlfriend of one of the chief suspects. It's in these early scenes that Mangin is off the leash, slamming suspects heads into tables as a manner of interrogation, and, outside of work, joking with his friend Lambert (Richard Anconina), the criminal lawyer for most of the scumbags that Mangin puts away. Lambert is good at what he does, and most of his clients get off, yet he and Mangin laugh and joke about the system. It's all just a game to Mangin, something for him to do in order to satisfy his many appetites, as the line between the police and criminals is blurred.

Then Police settles down somewhat, as Noria turns from frightened innocent to fully-fledged femme fatale. She gets herself involved in a stolen wad of cash, and suddenly no-one is safe. Mangin is slowly revealed to be a lonely widower, and the film loses it's momentum. The fast dialogue and the murky world of pushers, pimps and prostitutes fades in favour of long takes in empty rooms, and Mangin suddenly isn't as interesting as he was. Sometimes it's better to prolong the mystery, to keep a character's motivations skewed. But Police is still a great ride, featuring one of Depardieu's best ever performances.

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Police is an objective appraisal of African Muslim community wherein Pialat takes us on a fantastic tour of Parisian drug dealing activities.He has vibrantly portrayed Arab world from an evenhanded French perspective by depicting individuals caught in a vortex of social context.All its characters are so vulnerable that even the slightest fantasy pays a heavy price.Pialat has acquired laudable brilliance from his leading players.Depardieu is exceptionally brilliant in his role as Inspector Mangin.Sophie Marceau is equally impressive in her role as compulsive liar Noria.She has incarnated her role with noteworthy aplomb.Police is a solemn chronicle about the interminable combat involving corrupt people on the one hand and an honest police officer like Mangin on the other hand.Police differs from other films of thriller genre by laying a good deal of emphasis on its protagonists' frame of mind.

This definitely isn't the most exciting movie about law enforcement (it took me three tries to finish it because I kept falling asleep). Instead of car chases and shoot-outs it contains a lot of dialogue (some obviously improvised) and focuses mostly on the relationships between the various interesting characters. It is a kind of a police procedural, but even there it focuses on the more mundane aspects of police work that the much more famous Hollywood(and slightly more famous Italian) cop movies tend to skip over.

The whole thing wouldn't work though if it weren't for the acting. Gerard Depardieu plays one of his sympathetic anti-heroes, the kind of guy you really shouldn't like, but eventually really do. Even though she was only about 18 at the time, Sophie Marceau manages to hold her own against the great Depardieu as a potential femme fatale who is mixed up with the Tunisian drug dealers he is trying to bust. It's well known that Marceau is a "Bond girl", but it's not often mentioned that (with the possible exception of Eva Green) she's also the most TALENTED of all the "Bond girls". I was impressed with Sandrine Bonnaire for another reason. I knew she was a formidable actress from Claude Chabrol's "L'Initiation", but I had no idea how cute and sexy she was in her younger years. She has a much smaller role as a 19-year-old prostitute Depardieu's character picks up, but she handles the requisite French-movie full-frontal nude scenes both Depardieu and Marceau uncharacteristically fore-go.

The crime story here is interesting too in that both the Tunisian criminals and the cops are obviously flawed, but not unsympathetic characters. (You kind of don't want anybody to win or lose).This is kind of a slow-going flick, but ultimately it is worth it.

Just when you thought Gérard Depardieu couldn't get any sexier, he made Police. Ladies, if you want to see him as a tough-talking cop, you've got to rent this movie.

This isn't your typical cop flick. It's not loaded with action scenes, it's not particularly gritty, and it's not a comedy about two unlikely partners finding a lasting friendship as they bicker and solve an impossible case. This is just a day-in-the-life movie about cops trying to bust drug-dealers. They have to slog through uncooperative witnesses, red tape, clues that don't lead anywhere, and a moral line that they can't cross but sometimes do. Sophie Marceau is the leading lady, a bad girl who only thinks of herself. She's cute as a button, though, so even though he knows she's bad news, Gérard can't ignore the attraction he feels for her. Check this one out if you're in the mood for a French flick from the '80s with two cutie-pies as the leads.

I don't think anybody can make films like the French. Let's all go to France and watch films. Maurice Pialat has put something together here that's like a religious experience. At the end a soaring modern aria comes on and right there in the first few notes you realize he really did trick us - it wasn't about money, lust and war but life and the common tragedy. This is a film I first saw on video about 7 years ago. It blew my mind then. Warhol had come to mind, because of the overall affectless tone, the plodding rhythm. I had found it in our local supermarket then and again last week, up for sale $3.50. No way I was going to miss it - I had blabbed about it to too many people thru the years. But I procrastinated looking at it, expecting it to be boring. I couldn't really remember much besides its tone. The schedule cleared, though, and equipped with a serious remote I chopped my way through slowly, back over the subtitles again and again catching it all. A knockout.