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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Just perfect...

Expected more

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

First thing, people should know about this movie is that it is based for a large part on real events. The war between the two police departments and their police officers really happen (at least during the 1970's) and really drive to the death of police officers during a raid.This film is not really a movie for me, it is a catharsis for Olivier Marchal about his past (he was police officer).So yes the film is dark, hopeless or almost but it was like that. If you dislike this movie, please avoid MR73.If you liked it, you will enjoy all Olivier Marchal's movie as well as some french classics like :"Police Python 357" or "The red circle"

36 (36 QUAI DES ORFEVRES) is a 2004 film that is just now making it to DVD: it should do very well with audiences who enjoy fine thriller/suspense dramas that depend on brilliant acting as opposed to endless pyrotechnics and CGI gimmicks. This film was inspired by a true story as related by director and actor and writer Olivier Marchal (with Franck Mancuso, Julien Rappeneau and Dominique Loiseau) of some corruption uncovered in the Paris police in 1985. The film is tense, forces the audience to think as the action jumps around showing simultaneous events in a smoothly cut and paste method of cinematic magic, and is populated with some very unforgettable characters who are a able to make us believe the fact that good cop/bad cop is a matter of interpretation in the vagaries of police action. There are repeated serial heists in the criminal underbelly of Paris, hijacking and murders that confound the headquarters of the Paris Police headed by Robert Mancini (André Dussollier). Two departments are challenged to put an end to the madness: the BRI headed by Léo Vrinks (Daniel Auteuil) and the BRB headed by Denis Klein (Gérard Depardieu) who are competing to head the police division now that the head Eddy Valence (Daniel Duval) is retiring. The personalities of these two competitors are quite different and the tone of past mistrust pervades every conversation and confrontation they have. Each is determined to be the one who brings the heinous group of criminals to justice. The violence escalates when Eddy is killed: the policemen are devoted to Vrinks who has considerable connections with the underworld such as Silien (Roschdy Zem) who seems to pull Vrinks down with an unexpected incident. Klein is the power obsessed cop who seems to stop at nothing to assure that he is responsible of the end of the hijackers/murderers, even to the point of involving Vrinks' wife Camille (Valéria Golino) in an event that results in Camille's death. Vrinks and Klein each commit blunders that result in a chain of events that blurs the lines of morality and enters the realm of vendetta and revenge. In addition to brilliant performances by both Anteuil, Depardieu and Golino there are memorable cameos by Francis Renaud as Titi, a cop with a heart, Anne Consigny as Klein's wife Hélène, Mylène Demongeot as the sassy older tart with a heart Manou. Daniel Antueil's daughter Aurore Auteuil who plays his screen daughter Lola as well, and even director Olivier Marchal as the criminal Christo. The musical score by Erwann Kermorvant and Axelle Renoir is unusually fine as is the cinematography by Denis Rouden who appreciates the importance of closeup shots of the intense psychological aspects of both Anteuil's and Depardieu's faces. This is a film for those hungry for intelligent and thought-provoking dramas. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp

It appears almost obligatory for a film such as 2004 French thriller, simply entitled by that of a number in "36", to be compared to Michael Mann's 1995 opus Heat; such comparisons seem synonymous with said film whenever a fresh feature of its ilk exploring the dynamics between friends and foes all existing and pot-boiling with one another within the same pan on the same hob comes along. Olivier Marchal's film, working from a screenplay he contributed to, is at once a fine police procedural movie but additionally a well played out crime drama and family ties serial which broods and comes together really nicely. The films are close to all-but stylistically similar, 36's poster greets us with that metallic blue hue rife within certain Heat sequences as two big-shot actors playing up to their off-screen persona's appear to be about to head into a one-on-one duel of some kind; projects in which they have both worked together resonating at the back of our minds as we head in ourselves.In the stylistic department, our lead actor, Daniel Auteuil, repeatedly cuts rather-a dash as a younger Pacino from around the mid-90s. Like Pacino's Heat character, he operates now and then with his criminally minded underworld contacts, whilst there is the sequence in which he must illustrate to his wife the dangers and difficulties of bringing his work life and work ethic into that of the domestic set up - somewhat reminiscent of a similar Pacino driven scene in said film. Both film's additionally see a dramatic, early armoured van heist act as the catalysts for the respective films. 36 is probably without the thematic substance which ran throughout Heat, of which pertained to the two male leads; here, Auteuil's police officer Léo Vrinks and Gérard Depardieu's police officer of similar rank Denis Klein sharing dissimilar relations in that there is certainly no love lost nor sense of mutual respect that the two men share in their respective lives or lifestyles. This doesn't detract from the film in any way, in fact Marchal's utilising of Mann's film as a source point before going down differing routes is to be constructively acknowledged.Crucially, the film paints a portrait of these men at odds with one another as numerous sub-plots and events occurring around them unfold and contribute in their own precise way to the plights of each man. In Vrinks, we have a police officer with connections of that the criminal underworld which goes against standard regulation, and yet is arguably one of the more upstanding characters in the film. When he exacts some agonising payback on a man in a secluded wooden area, whom is guilty of putting a local prostitute through a fair ordeal, we come to realise of his methods and that such activity has an overbearing sense of it being induced by gangsters, or is the sort of reaction gangsters might follow through with themselves. In Klein, the film provides us with an initially staunch and firmly straight-laced cop whom sticks to the straight and narrow in that sense but is a boozing, aggressive, self-centred man with a big build and out for an item as illegitimate as revenge.We begin in the present before flashing back to the events which lead up to Vrinks lying disgruntled and upset on a prison bed; the props and items in his cell suggesting the respect the man carries, that he is permitted such things or that there is a leniency inferred onto him hinting at minor offences or just sheer pity. When we flash back, we see Vrinks enjoying healthy company at a restaurant's bar with other police officers, during which one has his masculinity mocked for attempting to recite some poetry during this, a send off for a retiring official, establishing a certain bravado or macho set of characteristics for the police officers of Vrinks' department. The outgoing is the superintendent, his verbal establishing that his post is now there for the taking for somebody coming through such as Vrinks or Klein a proverbial prize looming at the end for what transpires; his additional confirmation that his desire to catch a gang of robbers whom we saw pillage that armoured van is strong, and sees him get-across a certain urgency to get this done so as to form a sort of swan-song.The item which drags both Klein and Vrinks together is in the form of a murdered informant Klein was rather fond of, a crime perpetrated by a Vrinks contact whom made sure Auteuil's cop was there to witness it; the fallout causing an immensely enjoyable power struggle within the confines of the police force as numerous supporting characters, such as wives and so forth, cause particularly harrowing events to entwine spawning all manner of strife.Essentially what 36 deals with, or at least feeds off of in order to induce dramatic effect, is that of corrupt police officials; an issue rife within a lot of contemporary French thrillers of both this ilk and of varying others, usually ordained by films from the factory of Luc Besson. Marchal's film is not another scuzzy excuse to exploit sensitive issues surrounding that of the problems France clearly has with political or authoritarian figures for sake of cheap, action imbued frills. Where Besson's writer/producer accredited films carry with them a belittling sense of introducing without really exploring, 36 encompasses police corruption as a subject apart of the film's process; symptomatically deconstructing those within and getting under the proverbial skin of such a caricature or authoritarian archetype whilst blending in genuine and authentic narrative elements in the process. The film is not the cynical, half-hearted show on how corrupt and narrow-minded police officers are, but in fact is a richer and more scholarly character study which is rarely, if ever, uninteresting.

this film starts out with the promise of hard core-action in the vein of 'HEAT', but transcends into a drama beyond the expectations of the first ten minutes. this film takes the best of the old french dramas and mixes it with the best of the new french thrillers: that is to say, less dialog, and more action. the problem with older French dramas was way too much dialog. there was so much talking, without action, that the rules of story were left moot. a character is defined by action--not dialog: the same as real life. but one thing traditional French drama did excel at was sweeping story lines.this film mixes a traditional drama storyline with a new, new wave French thriller's understanding of action, and births a competent Hollywood-type hybrid that leaves Hollywood in the dust.for the most part, whenever Hollywood attempts this scope of action and storytelling it fails miserably. this film does not. and it manages to do so within one generation, and just one film. French action-crime cinema has come a long way, but it does so in deference to its Hollywood teacher--as it should. and it is always refreshing to see a student surpass the teacher.