Review of Police, Adjective (2010) by Gordon A — 14 Mar 2011

Marvellously deadpan Romanian police drama, set in a small rural town and following a cop, Cristi, who is tailing three teenagers who are smoking pot which carries a prison sentence under outdated Romanian law.

Porumboiu focuses on the "inaction" of policing - the hours in the cold staking out a residential house, writing reports about uneventful days, trying to get busy work colleagues to do background checks.

Bucur plays Cristi as a professional, expressionless figure, only showing a lighter side at home with his wife for example when they get debating on the meanings of a tacky pop song his wife repeatedly listens to on youtube.

It says it all that the most dramatic scene involves three men and a dictionary. Cristi refuses to arrest one of the kids as he believes the law will soon be changed to a more lenient position, however the shrewd, no-nonsense Police chief, played with menacing intelligence by Ivanov, uses four simple dictionary definitions "conscience", "moral", "law" and "police" to quietly yet threateningly convince him otherwise.

It's a film with purposefully long takes, and will probably bore many with its focus on the mundane, but it had a twinkle in its eye I really appreciated.