Police, Adjective

The language of law, as witnessed and experienced by police, supervisors, and “criminals,” is dissected in this extraordinary work. Cristi is a decent beat cop tailing a clueless, unthreatening teenager around town and has plenty of time to ponder why his supervisors are unleashing the full weight of the law against an ordinary teen. The film’s first half, shot on the streets of contemporary Romania, documents a society between ruin and repair; the final section, a bravura long take of Cristi’s confrontation with his supervisors, is a philosophical examination of how the language of law is defined—and controlled, by those in power—through the laws of language.