Crime thrillers seem to require two things: an air of realism, and an expressive power. The balance can vary wildly. Marcel Carné's interesting, uneven Les assassins de l'ordre (1971) has a very good balance half the time, but the other half of the time it's neither realistic nor expressive.
Jacques Brel plays a crusading judge investigating a case of police brutality resulting in a death in custody, and... Wait. Jacques Brel, singer-songwriter and one of the ten famous Belgians? Is this possible? And if so, can somebody please immediately make a movie where Randy Newman plays a cop on the edge?
Still. Brel is ugly enough to be plausible as a judge, and his case is interesting. The dumb insolence of the cops he's investigating is also convincing and dramatic. Amusingly, one of them also plays a cop in Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty, which leads one to expect zany jokes that never come.
Jacques Brel plays a crusading judge investigating a case of police brutality resulting in a death in custody, and... Wait. Jacques Brel, singer-songwriter and one of the ten famous Belgians? Is this possible? And if so, can somebody please immediately make a movie where Randy Newman plays a cop on the edge?
Still. Brel is ugly enough to be plausible as a judge, and his case is interesting. The dumb insolence of the cops he's investigating is also convincing and dramatic. Amusingly, one of them also plays a cop in Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty, which leads one to expect zany jokes that never come.
- 3/3/2011
- MUBI
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