36 [2006]

See Larger Image	List Price: £19.99 Our Price: £6.97 Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Manufacturer: Tartan Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu, André Dussollier, Valeria Golino, Roschdy Zem Directed By: Olivier Marchal Average Customer Rating:


Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Binding: DVD EAN: 5023965362322 Format: Anamorphic Label: Tartan Manufacturer: Tartan Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Tartan Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2006-09-18 Running Time: 110 Studio: Tartan Theatrical Release Date: 2004
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Outstanding. Comment: I watched this the other evening, and actually paused it half way so that i could look on Amazon,and buy the soundtrack(which i found). Quite simply, this is one of the best foreign-language films that i have ever seen. Breathtakingly made, with a great soundtrack. Customer Rating: Summary: Pitch black and beautiful Comment: Several reviewers have compared 36 Quai des Orfevres with Michael Mann's "Heat"Heat (2 Disc Special Edition) [1995] but in my view this is superior. "Heat" has a kind of writing-by-numbers quality that comes in so many Hollywood movies from the fact that screenwriters go to screenwriting courses at college and so get strait-jacketed by theories about "Three-Act Structure" or "Five-Act Structure". French films seem more concerned to follow character and character interaction, and have the gung-ho stuff take care of itself when it arises naturally. French audiences would entirely get the reference to Henri-Georges Cluzot's 1947 masterpiece, "Quai des Orfevres" Quai Des Orfevres [1947], and the film needn't fear any comparisons. There is action aplenty in "36", some of it not when you expect, but the film is mainly concerned with the Grudge Match between two cops, Vrinks (Daniel Auteuil) and Klein (Depardieu), fuelled by natural antipathy and the fact that Vrinks took Klein's girl. The obsessive competition leads them deeper and deeper into a moral mire. Directed by an ex-cop (Olivier Marchal), who also co-wrote, it is a film steeped in police culture, the cameraderie, the politics, the bureaucracy. It plays on the grubbiness and the moral compromises involved in using informers; both Vrinks and Klein touch pitch and are defiled. It has a devastating world-weariness, and it's pitch black. Depardieu and Auteuil are superb, but to me the honours go to Depardieu. It's all to do with faces (there are a lot of close-ups in this movie). Depardieu has now in late middle-age grown into the face he was always meant to have. Brutal, haunted, full of pain. So he inhabits Klein in a way that goes beyond acting to being. Auteuil by contrast as he gets older seems to have problems finding his screen Face. His is more of an "Acted" performance, which is not to say it is over-acted. But I was moved by Depardieu in a way I wasn't by Auteuil. What prevents me from giving the movie 5 stars is the way it slides out of moral ambiguity. For two-thirds of its length it lives in shadows, but from the moment Klein decides to destroy Vrinks we slip into more conventional Goody-and-Baddy emotions. On the other hand, the potentially stickly domestic scenes are well handled and essential to the plot. A very fine policier indeed, and with two genuinely "Wow!" moments - one early on during a raid on some nasty thugs, and the other right near the end with a plot twist so simple, so right, and so entirely in character that you'll kick yourself you didn't spot it coming, so deftly does the director mislead you. I won't spoil it for you. Customer Rating: Summary: Sheer Gaul!! Comment: This film begins well and ends a bit like the Czech Film 'Kolya' at an airport,at least I think it's an airport??, but unlike 'Kolya' in a deeply insubstantial way. As another reviewer has remarked, it IS all over the place. The characters are unlikable and poorly developed and it feels easy to lose the point in the films, fairly, meandering path. The end scenes confused the hell out of me, but I won't say why as this will give too much of the film away for those who have not yet seen it. The two main 'protagonists', Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil, are fairly well constructed but Depardieu seems as though he doesnt really want to be there, a shade one dimensional and wooden, also vaguely 'Asterixy', he's been far better in other films. All in all it's watchable for the first half hour or so but never really develops into anything remarkable in fact the most remarkable thing is, it isn't. Customer Rating: Summary: Disappointing Comment: An uneven film of two halves that ultimately disappoints. Although it stars two of France's leading actors, it has the feel of a two part ITV drama. Depardieu could act his part in his sleep - it's hardly a career high as previous reviewers have stated. The plot is flawed, especially towards the end with the scene in the nightclub involving the retired policeman, which leads to an assassination - it was all a little coincidental / convenient. Also, as mentioned in an earlier review both the lead characters live in huge homes that they could not possibly afford on a police salary and the police chief lives in an even bigger country manor. Billed as the French `Heat', it's a weak comparison - they're poles apart. Customer Rating: Summary: Chaleur Comment: Often compared to the American film "Heat" 36 seems to me to be a direct descendant of "La Balance" with its violence and the interweaving of flicworld and the criminal world. Indeed, the crews of the two major characters are straight out of La Balance. The plot concerns the rivalry of two (ageing) police commanders both being considered for the position of overall commander, a role occupied by one of those excellently spineless characters that we've hated since Inspector Harry Callaghan's time (played far too well by Andre Dusollier). One of them (played by a thinner Depardieu) is obviously a Bad Person because he smokes, drinks and isn't nice to his wife. (Ok, belay the point on smoking because everyone does it here.) But the other (played by Auteuil)is also not averse to a bit of extra-curricular vigilante stuff, and is trapped in a rather ingenious plot-device that requires him to place himself in hazard to get the bad-guys. What follows is an almost Zola-esque parade of disasters for the Auteuil character, saved in the end by a deux ex machina (if you'll pardon the pun). I don't think 36 has the depth of La Balance, and the plots are pretty ropey (what CSI would do with the evidence is anyone's guess)but it moves along at a fair clip. I am left wondering why anyone joins les flics as it seems that they all get murdered by vengeful gangsters upon release from the clink; a bad case of unstoppable villains (aka Terminator Syndrome). More Reviews