Police, Adjective
Unrated; 113 min.
American police procedurals may focus on high-tech investigations and climactic gunplay but rarely do they turn solely on exact definitions of words. Not so the Romanian film Police, Adjective, an absorbing and contemplative detective story in which the high point of the action involves reading from a dictionary. Really.
The latest film from director Corneliu Porumboiu, who earned acclaim previously for 12:08 East of Bucharest, centers on a young cop named Cristi (Dragos Bucur) who has been assigned to follow a high-school boy who authorities believe is dealing drugs. As Cristi starts to put the evidence together, he becomes convinced the kid might use occasionally but isn't supplying others, that the true guilty party is someone else. But the higher-ups want an immediate arrest.
While this might sound remotely like a Law & Order episode, Police, Adjective is far from it. Shot in long, uninterrupted takes and filled with long conversations followed by long, uncomfortable silences as Cristi spends much of his time walking, waiting and watching, Police, Adjective is the exact opposite of its American equivalent. It's less about the crime than the drudgery of daily life. (The film is also billed as something of a comedy, though what humor exists is of a very dry type that may work better in Romanian.)
The climax, in which Cristi tries to justify his behavior to his bureaucratic superior (Vlad Ivanov, Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days), who in turn makes him read from a dictionary, turns out to be the perfect end to a film where talking is the equivalent of a shootout.
In Romanian with English subtitles.
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