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Police, Adjective (Politist, adj.)

Critics' Pick

(No longer in theaters)

Rating: No Rating
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu Cast: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Irina Saulescu, Ion Stoica, Marian Ghenea
Running Time: 115 minutes
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Rate & Review

Genre

Drama

Producer

Corneliu Poromboiu

Distributor

IFC Films

Release Date

Dec 23, 2009

Release Notes

Limited

Review

The Romanian drama Police, Adjective is a deadpan morality play in which a cop (Dragos Bucur) is ordered to tail a high-school kid who turns out to be doing nothing illegal except smoking a little dope. The cop argues that there’s nothing to the case, that it’s the informant who should be investigated. But he gets nowhere with his superiors, who insist his definition of conscience is limited. The second feature by Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest) won a Cannes jury prize and raves at this year’s New York Film Festival. I wonder if critics were writing those reviews during the scenes in which the cop walks up and down, up and down, staring ahead, waiting, for three, four, ten minutes. Or maybe it’s the scene when he leafs through a magazine while waiting to see his boss ï¿½ ticktock, ticktock. Porumboiu means to evoke the absurd, suffocating power of a police state. But the projectionist could double the movie’s speed and it would still drag. — David Edelstein