"Gutsy,
Intelligent and Effective – Narc Rips the Gut"
Nick Tellis
(Jason Patric) is a wreck. He’s been suspended from the force
for months now, the result of shooting a pregnant woman while
pursuing a suspect. She lived, but her unborn child didn’t, and
he still isn’t sure what he could have done differently. You
see, he’s a narcotics officer, or “narc,” and delving into the
dangerous and murky waters of the drug culture can take you
places you’re not prepared to go.
But now
the Detroit police department wants him back, and they’re
willing to wipe his slate clean if he helps out with a case
simmering just this side of explosive. You see, a fellow narc
(Alan Van Sprang) was gunned down in a tunnel, and the quest for
the killer has reached a dead-end. Tellis isn’t necessarily sure
he wants back in, but with a new baby at home and getting
ends to meet on just his wife’s salary getting harder and
harder, the promise and allure of a desk job convinces him to
delve back into the world of drugs and chaos.
Paring
himself with the dead cop’s partner Lt. Henry Oak (Ray Liotta),
Tellis finds himself falling deeper into a world that almost
took his sanity the first time around. On top of it, he’s not
sure what to make of the dangerously driven Oak or of his
unhinged devotion to his former partner’s family.
Joe
Carnahan’s Narc is familiar stuff, but it is bracingly
effective. There hasn’t been a cop and robbers film this cold
and harsh since the 1970’s. Think French Connection but
pumped full of testosterone and grimy nastiness. The film hits
you like a drink of hot lead on a bleak winter’s day, and I mean
that as a compliment.
Almost
everything about this movie works beautifully. From Tellis’
pissed off wife (she’s upset he’s even considering going back to
work – more so when he actually does) to the strung out Captain
(Chi McBride) upset that this case is still open to the growing
awareness that neither Tellis or Oak may be all that they appear
to be, Carnahan grabs the viewer by the gut and slowly twists
into ever tightening knots.
Patric –
even if he does look like he just walked off the set of Rush
– has his best role in years here. It is nice to see him back
prowling the depths of such a deliciously complicated character.
Even better is Liotta, putting his all into an Oscar-worthy
performance. Oak is a seriously effected soul, and the actor has
a grand time hitting all of his nuances. A seductively
fascinating exchange between the two men in a parked car where
the shifty lieutenant claims to have become a better cop with
the death of his wife should be required viewing for every
aspiring actor. It is hard to think of many moments this year in
film that are much better.
The
frustrating thing about Narc has nothing to do with the
film itself. Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in January
and picking up the Grand Jury Prize, studios stayed away in
droves when it came to picking up the release rights to the
film. It’s downright upsetting that this is the very type of
movie Hollywood was falling over itself to make in the 1970’s
and 80’s. It took the star-power of Tom Cruise and his producing
partner Paula Wagner to finally convince Paramount to pick up
and release the film. While I applaud them whole-heartedly, the
fact that the studio behind Chinatown, The Godfather and
The Conversation needed the convincing at all is
despicable.
What’s the
best thing one can say about Narc and its director Joe
Carnahan? Well, it is the type of movie that gets you downright
excited to see what a director can pull off next, and there is
the small fact that it is hands down one of the year’s best
films. But more than that, the best thing one can say about
Narc is that it might prove once and for all that the
cookie-cutter corporate mindset in Hollywood has truly lost
touch with what great moviemaking really is.
If
executives at Paramount needed to be strong-armed to see the
light in this instance, what are the chances they’ll ever be
able to make a movie remotely like it themselves?
