Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Dragos Bucur | ... | Cristi | |
Vlad Ivanov | ... | Anghelache | |
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Ion Stoica | ... | Nelu |
Irina Saulescu | ... | Anca | |
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Cerasela Trandafir | ... | Gina |
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Marian Ghenea | ... | Prosecutor |
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Cosmin Selesi | ... | Costi |
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Serban Georgevici | ... | Sica |
George Remes | ... | Vali (as Remes George) | |
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Adina Dulcu | ... | Dana |
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Dan Cogalniceanu | ... | Gica |
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Costi Dita | ... | Officer on Duty |
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Alexandru Sabadac | ... | Alex |
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Anca Diaconu | ... | Doina |
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Radu Costin | ... | Victor |
In grim, dull Vaslui, Cristi is a young police officer, conscientious, laconic, recently married to Anca, a teacher. He's tailing a kid who smokes pot and may be supplying his friends. Cristi dislikes the assignment: the kid's clearly not a dealer, an arrest would ruin his life, and, Cristi assumes that Romania will soon tolerate marijuana. His superior tells him flatly that the law is the law and to finish the case with a quick arrest. Cristi wants to follow the informant, a youth whose father is a builder. Cristi watches, he smokes, he writes reports, he wants to meet with the prosecutor. Can a cop have a conscience? Is the noun being modified "procedural" or "state"? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
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.