Reviews & Ratings for
Police, Adjective More at IMDbPro »Politist, adjectiv (original title)

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36 reviews in total

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65 out of 75 people found the following review useful:
Provides a welcome dose of conscience, 19 October 2009

Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

Like Bruno Dumont's epic police procedural L'Humanité, Police, Adjective is a film of mood, silence, and soul. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, the second feature by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu is a follow-up to his black comedy 12:08 East of Bucharest which won the Camera D'Or at Cannes in 2006. Police, Adjective is about a taciturn, plain-clothed police officer who has developed a conscience over making an arrest, an unusual occurrence in the bureaucratic, post-Communist society of Romania where the law is rigidly enforced regardless of its logic. Like Phaaron of L'Humanité, Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is an unlikely cop, an unglamorous member of the working class who wears the same pullover sweater four days in a row and goes about his job in a mechanical and emotionally unexpressive manner.

Shown at the Vancouver Film Festival, Police, Adjective is set in the director's hometown of Vaslui in northeastern Romania, a venue that looks unbearably bleak. The general atmosphere is one of decay with paint inside the houses peeling and chipped, lockers rusted, mailboxes broken, and computers looking like Model Ts. There are no camera tricks here, only long takes delivered from a horizontal pan, cinematography that deliberately enhances the tedium. Porumboiu devotes long stretches of the film watching Cristi simply going about his routine. On orders from his superior, Nelu (Ion Stoica), he follows Alex (Alexandru Sabadac), a teenager at the local high school who is suspected of buying hash and selling it to his fellow students, shadowing the boy daily from home to school in hopes of finding out the source of the drugs.

In the course of his investigation, however, Cristi realizes that Alex is just a kid who occasionally smokes pot with some of his pals and is not a threat to society. Taking detailed notes, Cristi avoids meeting with his boss, waiting to find out the source of the hash before making a move, knowing that arresting a sixteen year old boy for smoking will mean a prison term of at least three years and possibly seven. Finally, when he is ordered to make a full report and take action, Cristi refuses to follow orders from the Police Captain, citing his conscience and the fact that the law will soon be repealed. Like Phaaron of L'Humanité, Cristi is willing to remain faithful to what he believes in but his feelings are ignored by those in a position of power.

In a memorable sequence, Cristi's boss, Captain Anghelache (Vlad Ivanov) brings in a Romanian dictionary and asks him to look up the meaning of the words "conscience", "law", "moral", and "police", attempting to show him that as a police officer he must obey the letter of the law, not impose his own morality on the situation. The scene is cold, efficient, and persuasive but it is obvious that the law he is asked to follow is based more on semantics than on morality. While most of the first half of the film is filled with uneventful surveillance, a scene at home between Cristi and his wife Anca (Irina Saulescu) adds some humor to the dour proceedings. Husband and wife discuss the meaning of the lyrics of a popular song that Anca is playing over and over again, Cristi giving the words a literal meaning which make little sense, while his wife ascribes to them their proper symbolic and poetic meaning.

Police, Adjective provides a welcome dose of conscience to a genre that has been buried in technology and filled with violence, car chases, and ugliness, a genre that has dealt only with methods and not consequences. While the film is austere and requires a great deal of patience, with little dialogue and no musical score, Porumboiu forces us to relate to the characters by observing their eyes, their physical movements, and their facial expressions. He expects us not only to see but to think about what we are seeing and, in the process, to bring us face to face with what makes us truly human.

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53 out of 80 people found the following review useful:
Cinema, superlative - credible, original, precise, 2 July 2009

Author: Mihnea the Pitbull from Romania

One of the best movies of the year - and, definitely, of the Romanian cinema all over.

After "12:08: East of Bucharest" (aka "A fost sau n-a fost" - original title), Cornel Porumboiu does it again: an incisive and tender, empathic and ruthless look into our contemporary humanity. It brings back memories of Kafka's "Trial": the blind mechanism of Law, meant to help us live better and, because of so many machine-like people, turned into a device for destroying lives. In the role of the young policeman who loses his faith into the system, Dragos Bucur brings on screen another of his memorable performances - subtle, deep, finely tuned.

But the main virtue of this excellent movie, of course, is Cornel's directing - credible, original, precise. The static long shots, creating pent-up inner tensions... the unbearable waiting scenes, under a leaden sky... the discrete plastic compositions of the frame... the insidious rhythm... the careful attention to the minutest details - everything, with a due meaning and a perfectly weighted impact.

Special kudos for the pivotal scene built up around Mirabela Dauer's song "I Don't Leave You Love" - a rare piece of abstruse idiocy, used as a main axis for the protagonist's confrontation with the life's absolute absurdity. The scene is so masterfully built and shot, that it makes us scream laughing (in Cannes, the audience was delirious) - but the ultimate meaning is tragic... this being Porumboiu's definitory characteristic - as he said himself: "comical authors are often the saddest ones of all".

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19 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
So slow, so real, 19 October 2009

Author: chimie from Budapest, Hungary

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It was interesting for me to read some comments from people who couldn't make it until the unhappy ending. Indeed, this is a very slow movie, so maybe if someone expects an action-based crime movie, he will be surely disappointed.

However, for me it was a much deeper experience than a usual Hollywood- style piece: when the viewer's eye gets used to the tempo, it start to discover odd, sometimes funny details, insights, old reflexes.

I saw this movie in a Romanian Film Festival in Budapest and it seemed that those in the audience speaking Romanian liked it much more than those who could just read the subtitles, but still I would suggest this movie to everyone with some interest in general moral problems, human relations and, mostly, in how does it feel to live in a not too nice post-communist town.

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24 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
stiff, realistic, non digestible for the "no movie without lot's of popcorn" type of individual!, 29 October 2009

Author: noblepacino from Romania

Is it normal the fact that people react differently while viewing this good movie? I'm sorry for being so obviously subjective about it and praise mr. porumboiu's last film, but i'm afraid not everyone tastes it and also learns something from it after watching! Of course it's normal. The actors... well I guess I could say... so and so performing. I like the way Dragos Bucur fills his character though (intense living his police days, but at the same time reflecting, i would say, a sane romanian thinker, borned in the wrong place but carrying his cross). And there was another aspect that pleased me while viewing "Politist, adj.": In general, when no actors have anything else left to say out loud, in most movies, the background voice carries out the story line. Not happening "in this case that, by the way, you have to solve". For those that haven't seen it yet, please follow my humble instructions so as to not childishly curse mr. porumboiu after you've left the theater: 1. Be Patient 2. Be Rational and Attentive 3. Try to Also Understand instead of only watching 4. Relax! This movie can never be considered dumb, in fact it's quite brave and smart.

And after all of this being said, I must add that this film IS NOT FOR EVERYONE TO WATCH!

(Please excuse my poor English)

Thank you.

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19 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
Police, subjective., 1 November 2009

Author: markedasread from Turkey

In "Police, Adjective", Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu devotes himself to the story of a small town cop reluctant of busting a minor for endorsing hashish with friends. Although vague at first, we learn that the civil police Cristi is having an unease conscience about nailing the young man, which may inflict seven years in prison for what Cristi believes to be a petty crime that will – soon enough – be looked upon more liberated. Throughout pic we follow his daily routines and interactions in the downbeat and austere town of Vaslui, including scenes of parodic bureaucracy and laudable lengthy takes.

"Police, Adjective" is admittedly in many ways difficult to interpret. The first half of the film deals with classic police work (classic as in reality, not classic as in previously depicted on film) including Cristi's pursuit of suspects and filing reports. For an audience used to clustered action flicks, this may seem as tedious and unbearable to endure. From a more objective perspective, I find it somewhat original and daring. This course of the film is harmless, it is on the contrary a certain, yet inevitable cul-de-sac initiated by a mere typo, that pushes it in a slightly too academic stand. On the other hand, it could also be considered an ironic twist when deciding how Cristi's moral dilemmas should be solved.

One of the more unfortunate aspects of Porumboiu's directing, in particular substantial for "Police, Adjective" but nonetheless equally visible in previous film "12:08 East of Bucharest", is that the (black) humor sometimes may appear so subtle that when juxtaposed to foreigners it can be completely lost (in translation.)

Watching Porumboiu's battle between an objective and supreme law versus Cristi's subjective conscientious law is evidently quite fascinating, despite being a bit too submissive at times.

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18 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
A modern Kafka, 14 October 2009

Author: ionut-18 from Romania

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The film depicts a society where the Dictionary has replaced the Bible and everything is striped down to the bare fact, rejecting everything that is human. The main character is a policeman tormented by the remains of humanity buried deep inside him. The system perceives his internal struggle as a potential danger and comes hard on him to "cure" his "desease" once and for good. Alongside this former human, the audience is absorbed into this surreal atmosphere, where even poetry's right to exist is questioned. Humans are robot-like beings, with no real personality, and the cinematography could not have been other than bare simple and static. It's an art film, not easily accessible, but it stays with you long after you left the theater.

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11 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Absolutely not your common police movie, 20 March 2010

Author: stensson from Stockholm, Sweden

The Romanian film wonder goes on and what's wonderous about it is that it's not afraid of life, like most movies around the world are. Since the beginning of the 1900s, there's an agreement about that life being absolutely boring. Lucky thing you can cut the film.

But here, we follow the young policeman on a routine mission, trying to investigate a supposed drug crime. The camera goes on for ten minutes, nothing happens or more likely...everything happens. What's morality about. Following the law or following your conscience? Or is it the same thing? Or should it be? An action drama there the action takes place inside the characters and the viewers. And that's absolutely fair enough.

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Slow and well-observed police procedural, demands honesty and conscience from the viewer, 27 June 2010

Author: oOgiandujaOo from United Kingdom

This is a film about a policeman and a matter of conscience. There's a circle of three friends, two boys and a girl, one boy has denounced the other boy to the police for supplying marijuana, it appears that this is so he can have the girl to himself. Our policeman, Cristi is being pressed to slap the cuffs on the kid by his superior, the charge is a life-wrecker, seven years in prison for smoking joints at lunch break. Cristi spends the movie trying to avoid this outcome. As he says, it's a foolish law.

Cristi is pushing against a bureaucracy that simply doesn't care, and ends up looking like a fool when he talks to people who are more educated with him, for example suffering his girlfriend's overanalysis of a ludicrous ballad, or the pseudo-dialectics of his boss, a masterpiece of sophistry. The point is that language or words often constitute another form of aggression, as the Athenians knew, you can win any argument once you have mastered rhetoric. Of course, as soon as anyone raises their voice or gets upset, this is taken as a sign that they've lost the argument, the intellectual warfare, losing having nothing whatsoever to do with being right or wrong of course.

The film is about conscience, something that totalitarian societies tried to eliminate in favour of the wisdom of the law. Good film although some of the intricacies of the discussions were lost on me not being a Romanian, and unable to follow the thread of Romanian spelling and grammar.

I actually loved the movie on an aesthetic level, I doubt it was intentional, but I always pick up on dashes of yellow in visual arts, an eccentricity of mine. For example in the street where the kid under surveillance lives, all the utilities pipes that come out onto the street are painted bright yellow, the young girl appears first wearing a bright yellow top under denim, and Cristi uses a yellow lighter and a yellow pen, most of the rest of the colour in the movie is very dull and subdued, I enjoyed these flashes. It's also nice seeing old communist offices, nowadays in the west everything is open plan and new, no-one has offices except the capo di tutti capi. Here there's peeling plaster, old caved in lockers, and a little peace and quiet. Hell I even liked just seeing Cristi sat down eating. Then there's the formal way where letters and plans are just shown on the screen with no background. I like the style of the police reports.

I would just point out that based on my understanding of the film, the English title is a mistranslation, politist is like the French word policier, which all we can translate as is "police procedural"; another translation is "policeman". The translations are nouns though so I was a little confused as to why it's being referred to as an adjective. Maybe the error is meaningful?

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15 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
conscience meets adjectives, 3 February 2010

Author: Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA

I recently saw "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days", about a woman's efforts to have an abortion in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania. Now comes "Politist, adj." ("Police, Adjective" in English), Romania's submission to the Academy Awards as Best Foreign Language Film of 2009. This one looks at small-town cop Cristi (Dragos Bucur) assigned to investigate a boy smoking hashish, and how he begins to have misgivings about the ethical ramifications of the task.

What strikes me is how much this small town in Romania looks like Russia. Most of the buildings all have a very Eastern Bloc look. To be certain, there are a few scenes where Dragos goes to the boy's house in what appears to be a posher section of the town, with more modern-looking houses. Many of the scenes in the film are long shots, especially the scene where Cristi and his superior use the dictionary to debate the true meaning of conscience and other words.

I don't know if I would call this the greatest movie ever made, but I still recommend it. The scene where Cristi eats dinner while his wife has an obnoxious song playing on the computer really shows Cristi's break in terms of conscience, just because of how he reacts.

Anyway, I like to get to see cultures that we don't often see, and I really liked this movie. I hope that Romania gives us more like this.

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9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Wry,Droll Slice Of (Romanian) Life, 4 March 2010

Author: druid333-2 from United States

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

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