Michael Connelly is one of my favourite authors; he writes awesome police thrillers that keep you guessing at every turn, often have incredible action scenes and are very meticulous in their depiction of a criminal investigation. In that sense, Narc is the best movie Connelly never wrote. He didn’t have anything to do with this movie yet he very well could have. The film is channelling Connelly in every bullet fired, every dead body and every door bashed open.

The film begins with a shaky, cinema-vérité foot chase as Detective Nick Tellis (Jason Patric) chases a suspect through various locales. The chase finishes with a shootout in which Tellis accidentally shoots and kills a pregnant woman. He is suspended from the force until he is asked to come back to investigate the murder of a narc named Michael Calvess. He is paired up with a friend and ex-partner of the guy, Detective Oak (Ray Liotta) and they set out on the case, interrogating two-bit dope dealers and, in Oak’s case, roughing them up a little.

Narc is gritty stuff like we haven’t seen much of in recent years. Director Joe Carnahan injects the film with a gloomy atmosphere that envelops the view. If this movie was a guy, he’d have a runny nose, dirt under its fingernails, a bad bruise under one eye and a scruffy beard. It positively reeks of cold and gasoline and car exhaust; it’s one of the most effective examples of creating an atmosphere I’ve seen in years. It’s also quite the visceral, violent film; when someone dies, we are not spared the details. When Patric vomits at one point, he doesn’t vomit a pitiful little “bleugh” off-screen. It’s there, on-screen, lending authenticity to the film.

Obviously, vomit is not what makes this movie work (Problem Child 2 would have been a multi-million-dollar hit). The screenplay is much more realistic than your usual cop drama; had this been another film, Liotta and Patrick would have found their big clue 45 minutes in and spent the rest of the movie fighting some big evil dude. Here, the film takes a more natural procession; they start by seeing two-bit dope dealers, they get false leads… like an actual investigation. One particularly memorable scene has a dead dope dealer who’s got his head blown off. The hypothesis was that he was murdered, but Tellis steps in with the real reason… and it’s quite the scene. I won’t reveal more than that. The movie does lapse into typical cop fare whenever Tellis has a scene with his wife; she wants him to quit, blah blah blah… the usual.

The film shares familiar territory with Rush (1991), which also starred Patric in a similar role. I didn’t particularly care for that one; the characters were deathly boring and I couldn’t care less what happened to them. It’s interesting, however, to compare Patric’s performances. In Rush, his character had nothing to live for until he met Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character; here, he has a wife and child and this makes the character (and performance) much more interesting. Patric doesn’t work very often, for some reason, but it’s always good to see him because I’ve never seen him do anything but solid work (even that awful Solarbabies thing which I’ve never seen completely).

Ray Liotta is a whole other ballgame. His career has had its ups and downs; after the phenomenal success of Goodfellas, he got stuck in what was mostly routine Hollywood fare: action, thrillers and Operation Dumbo Drop. Then he did a string of supporting stuff in big studio movies: Blow, Hannibal, Heartbreakers… With Narc, Liotta finally gets to show his still-potent acting chops. He took more than thirty pounds for the role, donning a goatee… and boy, does it ever pay off. Gone is the Ray Liotta of old; he does work here that way above his usual stuff. He really gets under the character’s skin, delivering an explosive performance that few anticipated. This being a relatively small film, the cast is mostly peppered with unknowns. Chi McBride (the principal from Boston Public) plays the cops’ superior and Busta Rhymes (who I didn’t recognize because he wasn’t as annoying as usual) has a supporting part as one of the suspects.

Carnahan only directed one film prior to this: 1998’s Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, a well-received crime thriller made for a handful of peanuts. That’s surprising, because Carnahan shows little of the flaws that young directors often have. Carnahan bathes the film in an atmosphere not unlike the gritty thrillers of the 70’s: The French Connection, Dirty Harry, and especially Sidney Lumet films such as Serpico and 1981’s Prince of the City. The movie is all muddy browns and dull greys; Carnahan also uses a grittier print at times to convey… whatever he has to convey. This is a guy to watch; too bad his next project is another movie in the boring-as-hell Mission: Impossible franchise.

If the film has few flaws, they make up for it in weight. Narc literally lasts two seconds longer than it should. The twist ending comes around, and it’s a great one; it puts the characters in a state of limbo as you truly wonder what’s going to happen. The last frame, however, is a bit of a cop-out that resolves too many things and ruins the once-ambivalent ending that Carnahan set up.

Narc is a fierce and visceral little film; it takes paths that have long since been overgrown by vegetation. Though it’s not without flaws, it’s certainly worth seeing. The last fifteen minutes are so are landmark police thriller stuff; it ranks with The French Connection’s car chase in terms of gritty, in-your-face police “action”. Don’t miss it.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age