Btexxamar
I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.
Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
ben hibburd
Maurice Pialat's Police is a moody, gritty French noir. The film stars Gérard Depardieu as Mangin a rough, no-nonsense police detective, that during the process of trying to bust a Tunisian drug ring falls for a mysterious alluring woman (Sophie Marceau) whose linked heavily with the gang. Maurice Pialat directs this film with his usual stoic motifs, and just like The Mouth Agape it works for this film. The tone is excellent thanks to the use of classic noir elements. The main issue I had with the film, is that that it wasn't concise about what it wanted to achieve, whether that's to be a straight police procedural or a character piece/love story, in the end it becomes a melting pot of different ideas.Another problem I had with this film was it came across too passive, there was no punch to the story, everything just happens with low energy. The pacing left a-lot to be desired, most of Pialat's work is finely paced, but in a film like this which is more focused on plot it needed to be a bit quicker. There were large portions of the film where I found myself becoming disinterested in what was happening on screen.This is the weakest film I've seen from Pialat so far. What saves the film from being flat-out boring is Gérard Depardieu's excellent performance. He carries the film by being constantly interesting and engaging. He's also a fantastic conduit for other performers as his energetic screen presence bounces off all the actors in the film. Most notably is his terrific chemistry with Sophie Marceau together they really keep the film alive when it starts to become contrived and uninteresting.This is the weakest film I've seen from Mubi's retrospective look at Pialat's filmography, which is disappointing because I've enjoyed the majority of his films. In summery Police is a missed opportunity, it's an average crime drama that's boosted by two strong central performances. Police is the last film from Pialat's mostly stellar filmography that I would recommend.
Armand
at first sigh, a confuse/chaotic story. because the title seems be a trap.at the second, a love one. in fact, only one of Pialat demonstrations about the frame of an universe. realistic in so measure than it becomes bitter. cruel and delicate. a film out of precise genre who explores the interest for two real good actors and for a puzzle story. it is a love story in same measure as fear story. because the element who defines it is the search of axis for lead characters life. and Sophie Marceau/Gerard Depardieu are the best interpreters for create the web of an impossible relation and for suggest the map of a world.
lazarillo
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.
Bob Taylor
This is the one attempt that Pialat made to do a police procedural film. The story is told of how he got Depardieu and Marceau, the two biggest stars at the time, to commit to the project, then realized he had no script. He dispatched Catherine Breillat, she of the steamy soft-core classics, to spend her nights in Belleville soaking up the atmosphere of Arab drug gangs and write a script. Of course, he hated it... But why go on. Pialat's films are such a triumph of will over circumstances (his own failings) that it is useless to analyze the making of them.He has got Depardieu to play a detective, but somehow the character flows naturally out of Loulou, made five years previously. There is the same wildness, the same physicality, the same need to take risks. When the detectives, the hooker, the lawyer and Noria are all in the nightclub together, they are all risking something but they don't care much. The plot turns on a cache of drug money found in Noria's apartment, but that is just a convenience for the viewer; Pialat has a need to show us people under pressure, getting beaten, getting shot, spending time in prison and so forth.Reality intrudes on fiction: Frank Karaoui--who has several scenes as a restaurant owner and drug dealer--was convicted of dealing in real life.
