Police, Adjective (2010)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

the audience applauded

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

From my favorite movies..

To see this movie now you are probably going to have to get it on DVD. Too bad, because this is a case where it probably works a lot better in the theater than on your TV screen or laptop. Not for the usual reason - there is no "spectacle" that you will miss on the small screen. But in a movie theater you are stuck in your seat, it is dark, they make you turn off your phone, and you are required to watch the screen without distraction.The action of this film is .... slow. Yes, it is. There are long takes of nothing but what Cristi, the cop, sees as he is staking out a house that nobody is going in or out of, or shots of Cristi standing in front of some kind of little store with soccer graffiti on it, or of offices in the police station where everyone is waiting motionlessly for someone to get off the phone or come back from somewhere. All of the film's events, which would fit into 30 seconds of a "Law and Order" episode, are here uncompressed into their real tedious reality. So if you are watching it at home on the small screen, there will be temptations - to check your email, to switch over to Google to decipher the soccer graffiti, to make a pot of coffee, and then you find that you have paused it in the middle and you now have to get to work and come back to it later. I urge you to anticipate these temptations. Mark off the whole two hours on your calendar, turn off your phone, get all your snacks ready ahead of time, find a comfy chair, and just sit and watch it. And when you do, you won't - may not - find it boring at all. You may find it suspenseful. You may get into the mindset of the cop, who is under pressure from his bosses to wind up this routine "nothing" case by doing the routine thing that everyone expects him to do to a basically innocent kid, but who is willing to spend a lot of his time waiting - watching - hoping that something will come into the screen that will save him from having to do it. In this you will be aided by the fact that the utterly "non-cinematic" character of the acting, the locations, the sets, the pace of the direction promote the impression that you are actually watching a gritty sad reality through some fly-on-the-wall spycam. Even down to the "management-by-dictionary" scene. I am willing to bet that more than one lazy, uncaring, dunderhead boss conducts the affairs of his or her office in the real world using exactly this clumsy, patronizing and abusive technique. In your own life you may not ever have the opportunity to save the world from evil giant robots in the blink of an eye, but you may have to make a moral choice involving one person's future. This movie gives that kind of choice the time and attention it deserves.

As I can see, quite a few viewers made trite and deathly boring remarks about the worst movie ever( using that moronic phrase requires an IQ of a cucumber), or this is not entertainment. Well, duh...98% of American movies are just that, an attempt to amuse, entertain, induce a chuckle or such. It is mind boggling that all these idle people, go out of their way and seek this obscure Romanian art flick and than blame it for not being exciting enough. If thrill is all you want and expect from a movie it isn't that hard to find it. Most of the films are made for video game crowd anyway. So, I beg you people, stop watching films you don't like or understand, and afterwords torture us with dumb and badly written reviews.

After watching this movie that currently has a IMDb rating of 7.0, all I can ask is "you're kidding, right?" Are things so bad in Romania that this passes for entertainment? I hope that I'm not giving anything away, but there is a scene where the lead character was eating soup for about five minutes or so, alone and in silence, except for the sounds of his slurping the soup. Not exactly what I would call exciting police action. Watching him trail a couple of kids over and over again through the streets on foot didn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat either. Watching him waiting outside of his boss's office for several minutes while his partner reads the paper and the secretary is typing on her computer keyboard and clicking the mouse...not good either. (I hope I didn't ruin it for anyone.)Where exactly was the scene or scenes in this movie that influenced so many people to rate the movie so highly? Am I just not sophisticated enough to see the genius in this movie? You could easily find standing in a line at the DMV, waiting in your doctor's office while he's running 45 minutes late, or being caught in a two hour traffic jam during a snowstorm to be just as entertaining.

Hey gang...are you in the mood for a cop thriller with loads & loads of one car chase scene after another,enough stuff being blown up,real good,ditzy mindless blonde's with size 40 hooters parading around practically nude through out most of the film,as well as lots & lots of bloody,graphic scenes of people having their heads blown off with double barrel shotguns (at point blank range)? Well if you are...do yourself a favour and avoid 'Police,Adjective' like the plague. That aside, 'Police,Adjective' is a drama with some comedic touches from Romania that goes for the brain,instead of the testosterone fueled quarter oz.excuse of functional gray matter (and you know who you are). The story here concerns a plainclothes detective,Cristi (played to perfection by Dragos Bucur),who is on assignment to shadow a potential drug pusher,who is a high school student,to be set up for a drug sting. Problem is,Cristi has nagging doubts that this boy is truly guilty & objects to said such sting. Throughout his working day, Cristi has to deal with un-cooperative co workers,as well as his wife, Anca (Irina Saulescu),who has a penchant for turgid Romanian pop songs (she plays the same banal video over & over again on You Tube,while Cristi tries to enjoy his supper). For me,the (obviously)high points of this film concerns the occasional diatribes between Cristi & his co workers,replete with semantics (had this film been directed by the likes of Quentin Tarrentino,they would have droning on about American pop culture of the 1970's---thank goodness it wasn't). Corneliu Porumbiou ('12:08 East of Bucharest')writes & directs this low key police drama with more than a dash of brains going for it. The rest of the cast turn in equally fine roles. A director that is worth keeping an eye out for. Spoken in Romanian with English subtitles. Not rated by the MPAA,this film has a few drug related references,but ABSOLUTELY no nudity,sexual content,violence or pervasive strong language