Review of Narc (2002) by Grant H — 14 Jul 2013

In 1996 an edition of Entertainment Weekly magazine bore the headline 'Why Isn't Jason Patric a Star Yet?' and a full page, close up image of the actor. It's an excellent question, and is as relevant today as it was then.

Let's get back to Patric in a minute.

Like a mouth full of sand at midnight, Joe Carnahan's cop drama Narc (2002) is a dark and gritty son of a bitch.

In a grimy and grey Detroit the film opens with a frantic handheld chase sequence as undercover cop Nick Tellis (Patric) chases down a druggie to prevent him from lowing the cop's cover. The chase ends with a bystander dead and another injured, and our hero Tellis at the start of what will be an 18 month leave of absence while he gets his head back together.

Back in the now, Tellis is stable with a loving wife and baby boy when he is asked back to help out on a case that that department are making no progress with - that of murdered undercover cop Michael Calvess - and this in turn leads him to a new partner in the form of maverick on the edge copper Henry Oak (Liotta).

The blood soaked and complicated case threatens to drag Tellis back under, and as a protagonist Patric portrays a man trying to do the right thing at work, trying to protect his family from the grisly nature of it, and trying to keep his head.

Personified, Narc is a pugnacious slugger of a movie, a hunched boxer hunkered down and assaulting the viewer with jabs, slugs to the body and well timed haymakers that threaten to knock you on your ass. It's grimy to look at, as it is drenched in melting snow and rain a la Seven (1995). Much like Fincher's masterpiece, Narc is also relentlessly grim in subject matter and benefitting from a directorial visual flourish and a central performance of mesmerising depth.

Which brings us back to Patric. In 1996, the world must have seemed his oyster. Ridiculously good looking and athletic, Patric had by this time done the young gun on the tail end of the Brat Pack thing in The Lost Boys (1987), and had moved on to some exceptional work in the brooding neo noir After Dark, My Sweet (1990) dark thriller Rush (1991), before headlining, ahead of heavy weights Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman mind you, Sleepers in 1996.

Since that time however, despite some good work, Patric's career has nosedived into oblivion. His CV shows 13 films since 1996, none of them with two pennies to rub together to show for their box office takings.

What went wrong? Speed 2 (1996), that's what. His career never recovered.

Here in Narc Patric is excellent - touchingly damaged, cautious, smart and dangerous. It is a pleasure to watch. Partnering his is Ray Liotta doing his brilliant Ray Liotta impression - he shouts! He has crazy eyes! He shouts! He's a certain type of pleasure too, albeit it a shouty crazy eyed one. If Narc is the first ray Liotta movie you have ever seen you could be forgiven for thinking you are watching terrifying genius. If it's not, you will know it is just the Ray Liotta thing - he can't do anything else. Unfortunately too, Liotta role pigeonholing means that one can't help but suspect his character of involvement in the crime they are investigating, and so it proves, but the director is smart enough to keep these things shady until the final frame.

A thinking person's crime drama, and not one for the squeamish, Narc ultimately falls short of greatness because of the frequency with which is descends into really really loud shouting. When it is in those moments where the shouting is not turned up to 11 however, it is a smart and gritty drama with a fantastic central performance from Patric, the last one he put in to date. It's worth seeing just for that.