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Police, Adjective

Police, Adjective

2009
Drama
1h 53m
A police officer feels conflicted about arresting a kid for sharing drugs with his friends.
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Police, Adjective

2009
Drama
1h 53m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 58.77% from 238 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(238)
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Rated 11 Nov 2010
90
88th
A thought-provoking film from Romania about a police officer looking to do the right thing in the face of what he perceives to be injustice within the system. The film works on both a personal and a political level as the central conflict reveals differences in how the officer should conceive of his job. The contemplative style of the film underlines the monotony of the detective's job while providing the audience an opportunity to really appreciate what he's trying to do. Excellent film.
Rated 23 Aug 2012
92
97th
Here's a film that addresses the usual complaints about cop films with a long, methodical, uneventful stake out, the bureaucracy between shifts and the family life effects. It becomes quite gripping with hints of black comedy coming out of the frustrations. Perhaps because so much of the film is long and drawn out, the bursts of dialogue really stood out. The conversations between the main cop and his wife, as well as the final conversation with his captain give it that extra edge.
Rated 24 Apr 2010
30
10th
Incredibly dull, losing itself in long takes of indulgent dialogue. What a let-down.
Rated 12 Oct 2009
75
17th
Pretty boring for someone with ADHD.
Rated 27 Dec 2010
58
21st
Not bad, but too inert to hit home for me (though I suppose that was the point). Bucur, broodingly charismatic, and Ivanov, who, as he did in "4 Months...", steals his scene with his vaguely threatening, unflinching intensity, are great. But the whole felt like less than the sum, and lacked the sharpness and ingenuity of Poromboiu's masterful debut, "12:08 East of Bucharest." I need a second viewing (it's already starting to seem better as I mull over it) and reserve my final opinion until then.
Rated 19 Feb 2010
60
38th
Great material, but in-your-face attitude and repetetive, lazy narrative doesn't match.
Rated 15 Sep 2017
76
40th
I couldn't warm Porumboiu's style but his directing skill is perfect especially sequences plans were awesome.
Rated 03 Oct 2010
71
45th
This is a really challenging film, very minimalist and slowly paced. That said, the more the dialogue scenes play with meaning, intent, focus, perspective, roles and duties, etc. the more it seems like the long, quiet, surveillance scenes were gaining meaning. What that meaning was, I'm not sure. The finale between the protagonist, his partner, the chief, and a dictionary had me almost crying with laughter and many others walking out of the theater in a confused, agitated huff.
Rated 08 Nov 2010
25
61st
"Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective is really two movies, varying significantly in their degree of success." - Andrew Schenker
Rated 09 Jul 2009
68
66th
a great film about meanings. loved dragos bucur. the long shots are maybe a tad too long, but it all pays off in the end
Rated 06 Jun 2010
60
28th
The last 15 minutes is excellent.
Rated 24 Dec 2010
1
0th
Godard and Makavejev used to do this kind of thing as a subversive joke, but here it's literal-minded didacticism, impressive only to those who don't know how exciting good political cinema can be.
Rated 24 Jun 2015
48
45th
the dialectic/semantic arguments are clever and sort of fun (even if they telegraph their implications a little too broadly), and help to differentiate this somewhat from the scads of like-minded festival films with 'naturalistic'/'minimalistic' real-time-master-shot aesthetics, which otherwise this would be mostly indistinguishable from (ironically, for a film that seems to get off on it's own 'subversion' of police film tropes, it mostly just conforms to a set of vaguely more rarefied ones.)
Rated 21 Sep 2010
15
18th
Avarage. I watched this after being fooled by the fanboys at RT and imdb. This is a tiringly methodical study of a police officer on a very uninspiring case with the only highlight being the grammar lesson he is given at the end by a superior. He is shown doing 20 minute chase scenes... on foot, when told to wait for 5 minutes... they actually shot him waiting 5 minutes... and other heart-stoppingly thrilling moments sprinkled throughout. Could've been a great short. Not Recommended.
Rated 04 Aug 2010
85
80th
Raw Eastern European realism
Rated 05 Mar 2011
20
2nd
It's films like this that give what Haneke tries to do a very very bad rap. Someone should explain to these type of movies the difference between subtle, and straight utter nonsense.
Rated 25 Jun 2014
85
89th
This intellectual and moral inquiry into the intertwined nature of authority and personal ethics in the form of a very deliberately paced police procedural is spare, economical filmmaking at its finest; the kind that seems to show so little but actually manages to say a lot. Vlad Ivanov gives another superb performance as a manipulative douchebag.
Rated 20 Apr 2018
91
79th
It's very slow-moving, as designed, but once it starts to go, it freaking soars. It's a movie about semantics disguised as a crime film.
Rated 23 May 2020
70
75th
Very deliberately humdrum, as a means of getting across its insights into real Romanian law enforcement and its failings; this really separates "Police, Adjective" from the cop movie crowd, but the caveat is that large stretches feel draggy even to a viewer versed in slow and sparse cinema. Still, after a very deep and powerful finish, it's a film that stays and reverberates in one's mind.
Rated 04 Nov 2020
85
85th
Life is slow, decisions are made eventually. Life goes on. This life, this movie is depicting life in its most captivating character. Also words need to be defined, because they form sentences and they form the outcome of houghts or...maybe of our conscience.

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