Odd couple prove impressive

Don't take this relatively brief note as a measure of Narc's quality as a police procedural. It is an intense, relentless, accomplished work, and totally without humanity.

Joe Carnahan's first movie was Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane: this has those standard-issue ingredients, but they're only here for the nihilism that ultimately overwhelms everyone in the film (and most of those watching it).

Jason Patric, an undercover cop in wintry Detroit, with blood on his hands from a drugs stakeout that went wrong, is taken on board by Ray Liotta's burly, bearded lieutenant who's out to discover and avenge himself on whoever murdered his former partner.

They're both driven men, and the heat of their common obsession beats from their performances like a furnace door opened on live coals.

The film's setting is sordid beyond the imaginable. Its soundtrack reflects the ceaseless conflict of the urban dissonance of squalling babies, blaring sirens, gibbering druggies and voices eternally raised in anger and obscenity.

The medical realism of the corpses is enough to make you hold your nose. The ending is a protracted scene of torture and intimidation that Tarantino, who's a heavy influence here, might have thought over the top.

I can't give it away, even if I wished, for the old Rashomon device of unreliable narrators ensures that the last man left alive is as uncertain where truth lies as any stiff on the asphalt.

An impressive film, more to be admired than liked.

Narc
Cert: cert18