Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

JoeKulik 36th Precinct (2004) is a very good crime narrative. Gerard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil, two premier French actors, both deliver solid performances as great cops who both cross over to the wrong side of the law when they think that's it's to their advantage to do so. This film has a very complex storyline that is nonetheless well thought, and executed in perfect detail. No unbelievable coincidences, or unexplainable "holes" in the storyline. This film, therefore, has a very "tight" screenplay. The cinematography is great. The whole supporting cast gives excellent performances. This film left me wondering if strictly obeying the law is always the right thing to do. Hence, at least for me, this film is morally ambiguous in some ways. There is actually a number of different subplots in this film, but they are all well coordinated into portraying an overall consistent and believable film. There is some violence in this film, including a big shootout between the cops and the bad guys right in the middle of the street. However, none of the violence is in anyway gratuitous, and is very much integral to the storyline. This is definitely a good cops versus bad guys film, although sometimes it's hard to tell who the real bad guys are. This is a film that I'd like to view again just for the sheer enjoyment of it, and because it has much artistic merit.

Joe_Eagles ******Spoiler alert*****Meeeehhh. It all starts very promising, one cop pitched against another fighting over the same promotion and apparently there is a connection between them via loved one. The cop portrayed by Depardieu blows a major operation but still gets the promotion because the 'good' cop screwed up when he covers for an informant who kills three people while himself being present there. The thing is, the evidence against the god cop is based on the declaration of a hooker (witness to the killing) threatened with deportation. The good cop only had to deny the charges because no one would believe the hooker. But I guess the movie would then stop there: good cop gets promotion and bad cop not. After this the good cop loses everything: freedom, reputation, his wife. Everything except his daughter and the kitchen sink. That all btw, goes very sloooooowly and serves as way to somehow create the image of a great injustice being done to the good cop.After being released he seeks up the bad cop and presents him a gun so he can take his own life (because the bad cop was responsible for the death of the good cop's wife -the love connection-). Why would a ruthless career cop do that at that point if he hadn't considered it before (having in mind he also shot the wife after she was already dead; sounds pretty ruthless to me)?The end where the bad cop gets killed because of some other event in the movie was soooo predictable. I was disappointed by the movie. Lot's of potential and despite the acting of the main characters, it didn't deliver. It couldn't quite portray the rivalry between the two main characters. Too bad because I really like these rough French movies (but without the unnecessary and unbelievable fight scenes which this movie thankfully did not have too many of).

Robyn Nesbitt (nesfilmreviews) We live in a world full of mediocre crime thrillers, so when a well made film such as Olivier Marchal's "36 Precinct" comes along, it's deserves some attention and respect. In the underbelly of the Parisian criminal world, the Police are frustrated by a gang committing a series of violent robberies. Leo Vrinks (Daniel Auteuil) and Denis Klein (Gerand Depardieu) are two cops seeking promotion, and the imminent departure of the Chief (Andre Dussellier) sets the scene for them to compete for the vacant throne. It's the unrelenting opposition between the two lead characters that is really make this so compelling. The competition between them becomes increasingly ruthless and blurs the usual lines of morality, until there seems no difference between the police and the criminals they chase. The inner turmoil raging inside of Klein, a man torn between rigid morality and grasping ambition. Auteuil is a model in understatement, his low-key depiction of a cop determined to see justice at all costs. As the hunt for the crew drags both men deep into the Paris underworld, Vrinks and Klein spiral towards what seems an inevitable mutual destruction. Nicely constructed plot twists will keep you guessing until the end. I often refer to this film as France's version of "Heat", though story lines aren't the same or nearly as great, it carries itself in a similar fashion, and possesses that tone and ambiance. A stellar cast, a great story, and some momentous shoot-outs; what more could you want from the French?

Piers1 A great film with superb performances by Auteil and Depardieu and notable others.I *like* a film where there are plot and character ambiguities - this properly reflects the human condition. Life is not black and white and French cinema excels and is perhaps preeminent at delineating these complex truths of life. Such a movie leaves you thinking about it -and yourself- for a long while afterwards. Here, the inner conflicts of the various police units, the tension between moral conscience, duty, the desire for justice, loyalties, were powerfully recorded.Let's leave aside the technical point of the prostitute being able to identify Vrinks - I'd be happy to grant artistic licence here (perhaps she did see him though: we could say street-girls have -and need- the eyes of an owl). But do we believe Klein when, in the rest-room confrontation at the end, he contends with his old friend that his wife was 'already dead' when he shot her? He might have meant that she was so horrifically injured that he made a mercy killing. It's possible he meant that she was 'dead' in a more abstract sense.Klein though, was no cold, heartless monster. Nor did he act exclusively out of ambition or vanity. That Vrinks knew this, was referenced by a line early in the film where he rebutted a colleague's censure of Klein: 'he wasn't always like this'. What the film portrays is the brutalising effect that such experience can have on the individual - Klein was brutalised by his desire for justice, the agonies of his regrets for the families of men killed by the security van robbers, and his personal resolve -to the point of obsession- to achieve closure for them. This explains, if not mitigates, his seemingly unconscionable and irrational actions. His experiences, his regrets, forced on him a compromise of ethics - that same compromise of ethics which Vrinks had himself earlier enacted; and for the same reasons. Referring back to the rest-room scene, Vrinks couldn't bring himself to kill Klein because in Klein, he recognised himself, his own errors and fragilities (in fact he was the first to abuse ethics by being a party -if hesitantly- to the street murder)- all powerfully symbolised in the cinematography through the dialogue being screened via their reflections in the sink-mirrors. His enjoining Klein to dispatch himself was more in the sense of an old comrade advocating that as he (Klein) had played the game and had lost (notionally even more: integrity, morals, friendship, and broad respect), perhaps it was time to 'leave the table', rather than being animated by a bitter need for vengeance. If Klein really were such an indifferent, callous beast, it wouldn't have troubled him and he would have celebrated his reprieve- that it did clearly trouble him, defined the humanity, the morbidly-injured conscience in the man. The motorcycle drive-by was, in a sense, another merciful killing, and may well have saved Klein having to do it himself. When Vrinks later read of his friend's demise, his reaction was hardly one of 'high-fiving' jubilation. There was no certain 'victor' here and I don't think the film maker intended to frame it as a straightforward adversarial tale. In some sense, Vrinks prevailed in merely being alive and having a healthy daughter to live for. If it was any victory though, it was a pyrrhic one as he was, to no small degree, a principle author of the tragedies that unfolded.