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Absolutely Brilliant!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Jean-Luc Godard directs "Detective". The plot? A series of guests and employees find themselves bumbling about a Parisian hotel. One, a detective named Prospero, hopes to solve the murder of a man known as The Prince. Also present is a woman named Francoise (Nathalie Baye), who's unhappily married to an airline pilot (Claude Brasseur). She's at the hotel to settle a debt with Jim Fox-Warner (Johnny Hallyday), a fight promoter. Jim shares a room with a star boxer (Stephane Ferrara) and an entourage of young women. Whilst all these characters drift about, a Mafia godfather, also known as The Prince, discusses philosophy. He's slavishly followed by a catatonic little girl. "Detective" periodically cuts away to shots of a tripod-mounted camera as it gazes at life outside the hotel. Godard also frequently cuts to shots of neon-lit billboards, all advertising media brands. His hotel is itself populated by different "brands" or flattened "archetypes" (detectives, boxers, singers, lovers, nods to crime films, film noirs, slapstick comedy etc), as well as actors who come from different performance backgrounds and traditions (Johnny Hallyday is a singer, Jean-Pierre Léaud is associated with the New Wave, Alain Cuny is a classic French actor, Baye and Brasseur are mainstream actors, Seigner and Delpy signal a new generation etc).Ironically for a film explicitly commissioned to make money – Godard promised producers a mainstream picture in order to secure cash to finance his upcoming "Hail Mary" - "Detective" is a kind of anti-film about money. It opens with Francoise apprehensive about entering the hotel, which characters insist "smells of death". Like most of the film's characters, though, she's owed payments and so forced to enter. Indeed, everyone in "Detective" is chasing cash. Fighters seek riches, gangsters want repayment, characters sell jewelry and Francoise and her husband are down a couple million. "What's the point running around for nothing?" characters state. Man's gotta be paid, actors too. Significantly, the guy doing the paying is named after two Western, mega-film studios (Fox-Warner).Whilst these disgruntled characters seek payment, the film's detectives are locked in their own little subplot. "We're looking for the unknown!" one detective says, as he prowls the hotel's catacombs. He and his companions are always searching for "truth", "plot" and "story", all of which seem elusive and out of reach. "There are plenty of stories here" Prospero insists, "Im sure something is going to happen!" Of course nothing happens. Godard's "Detective" is a giant morass of non-events, inaction, banal conversations and subverted subplots. A kind of anti-film about nothing happening in which the actors of the film in which nothing happens are grumpy because they're only turning up to be paid and nobody's paying. Godard's films often attack the business of film-making, but with "Detective" we get a more vague attack on all economic relations. "The monkeys preached the new order, and little by little all the animals converted," one character says. We're then told a story about a mouse who is killed by his "new friends". "Things have gone back to the way they were," the Prince explains, "the new regime is over, beauty has become the beast!" Alligned to this "new economic order", in which "everyone is slavishly forced to submit", are the film's outmoded Mafia-men. Whilst a girl reads a magazine titled "Crackdown on the Mafia", a Mafia kingpin admits: "the mafia insists upon an outmoded way of life based on work and effort outside of which all existence loses all meaning." The kingpin then explains that the mafia has been forced underground by the "new order" and that "the mafia itself needs law and order to construct its business deals successfully". Later, a woman compares the hotel's mafia-men to banks, in comparison to which, she says, the mafia-men are angels.During the film's last act, Godard cuts to a movie director on television. "The narrator is king," the figure says, "making things happen with his own perception! I'm making this picture for the theatre, not the actors!" We assume Godard is referring to himself, the director as king, but soon someone else is revealed to be in control. At this point, in one swift move, the Prince has all the film's key players killed and steals all their cash. "Put up a fight! Retake it!" Francoise says, leading her husband to stand up to the Prince, before being killed himself. Seeking justice, the detective's female assistant crouches before the Prince and aims a gun, but her efforts are futile. The Prince casually disarms the woman. She then passively walks away and makes a joke about acquiring money. This scene encapsulates the power relations of the film, the Prince representing ruling groups within capitalist democracies (and their rigid social hierarchies), the dead detectives akin to neutralised justice systems and the corpses at everyone's feet hinting at the costs of the Prince's "new order". "The world is upside down," Godard says, throughout a complicated subplot which serves as a metaphor for why the Prince manages to be simultaneously dead and alive."Détective" is a film obsessed with books. Francoise wants to start a bookshop, the detectives are surrounded by paperbacks, Jim carries a copy of Conrad's "Lord Jim" (about a colonialist who sees himself on a civilising mission), Prospero reads "The Tempest" (a Shakespeare play with a character called Prospero) and the gangsters read "The Sicilian". Contrasted with the film's violent characters is an overarching discourse on love, the film's criss-crossing love affairs made impossible for various reasons, most of which are financial. Francoise's husband represents this love at its purest, but he's killed. Only the apathetic survive. This being Godard, "Detective" is relentlessly alienating. Godard's credits are interspersed throughout the picture, leading to a sense of disjunction and dislocation. The film's score is likewise disorienting. Epitomizing Godard's alienating effects are "Detective's" closing moments, which focus on feet, reflections, doors and use odd angles, all designed to obscure. 7.9/10 - Multiple viewings required.

Jean-Luc Godard really should have retired long before 1985, basking in the glory of his early triumphs such as BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE Soufflé, 1960). For later on he became a sad caricature of himself as a filmmaker. Here he artificially tries to revive the corpse of his youthful abilities and fails abysmally. This film is revoltingly pretentious, phoney, false, arrogant, clumsy, stupid, empty, vacuous, - what other adjectives can I think of? None of them are sufficient to damn the film enough. I recently obtained the DVD for the simple reason that I wanted to see what Julie Delpy was like when she was 14. This was her first film role. I shouldn't have bothered. She has few lines and merely flits around meaninglessly, like most of the other characters in this ridiculous excuse for a film. Godard makes most of the women, and one of the men, engage in pointless nudity, and we see lots of tits, especially those of Emmanuelle Seignier, whose second film it was (she was then 19), but mercifully Godard did not inflict this duty on the child Delpy, who keeps her nightie on (but why she is always in her nightie is never explained, just as nothing is ever explained, because geniuses like Godard do not need to explain). The power of Godard's name and reputation made many famous people agree to be in this empty vehicle, and waste their talents. I would say it would have damaged the talented Nathalie Baye's reputation to accept such a drear lead role as Francoise in this film, as it made her look so down-at-heel and washed-up (if, that is, one can be both down and up at the same time, and I have not committed some grammatical atrocity to match Godard's cinematic one). Some women may be excited to know that we get to see Claude Brasseur's willy, for what it is worth, though there is no reason for this. This happens in between him looking ghastly, desperate, and sad, which is just about all he is required to do for 95 minutes. (Can being married to Baye be that bad?) This film is a real 'downer', and there I go again with one of those directional adjectives, although how one can go down any further than rock bottom I have not yet determined. In this film we have the sight of the famous Johnny Hallyday, who for decades was the universal heartthrob not only of every French woman but of many French men as well, and if there were ever anything that really puzzled me about the French even more than boudin (blood sausage) and tête de veau (calf's head), it is Johnny Hallyday and his inexplicable appeal to a whole nations of Gauls. He does nothing in this film of note but sleep with Baye in a melancholy fashion. Baye looks so pained by this that maybe she discovered that Hallyday really had bad breath. The one bright spot in this film is the equally meaningless appearance of the old veteran Alain Cuny in a few mysterious scenes as 'the Prince'. Who the Prince is and why he is there is only roughly sketched. But the crusty old queen is always interesting to watch. Incredible that he lived to be 86, with all that romping around with boys. And my question is this: what ever happened to Alain Cuny's trunk in the entrance hall, covered by a cloth, after the Nazis left Paris? Only D. D. could tell us that, presumably. A mystery worthy of ENGRENAGES. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. But I fear there are no ears left acute enough to take my meaning.

This is why I love Godard. He turned a 'commercial' project he did in order to get financing for "Hail Mary" into one of his most enthralling late works, a sleeker, leaner, funnier, lighter version of the sort of film Godard made after the 60's. The film follows four different 'stories' in the Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare in Paris, where the entire film is set. Something of a deconstruction of the detective film or film-noir on paper, but the film is more formally interesting than it is story-wise (though its 'narrative' is often very amusing and overall very entertaining). Although critical reviews of "Detective" seem to be positive (all the ones I can find anyway, including Variety and the New York Times among others), the film is overall not too popular, and from my experience not too well-liked by Godard fans either. Shame as well because the fact that "Detective" combines some of the zip and light humor of Godard's early work with the more experimental sensibilities of later Godard films doesn't mean this is in any way lacking as a filmic experiment. It's gorgeously-shot with superb, intricate mise-en-scène, and features some of the most interesting and complex editing in any Godard film, but what really steals the show is the sound, which is an entire world all on its own. The visual splendor of the film is not only complimented, but overshadowed by the creative sound editing and mixing, genius use of music, and aural gags and puns. Dedicated to Edgar G. Ulmer, Clint Eastwood, and John Cassavetes, "Detective" is one of Godard's best, and likely his most criminally under-appreciated. It does ask for a patient, observant audience willing to listen carefully, but rewards that patience with great comic energy and some fascinating and beautiful aural experimentation. One of the best casts Godard ever worked with as well.

Like zetes stated, this was supposed to be Godard's "commercial" movie. However, it actually feels like his least commercial film of the ones released since 1980. Ever the prankster, Godard stocks the film to the brim with pratfalls, movie quotes and other allusions.It's hard to imagine how it is watching this in the theater. The film is so multi-layered that it's impossible to take in at one time. I'm not sure what his stance is on the home video vs. theater debate. A movie so dense with quotes is almost destined to be better viewed at home. There are multiple scenes where if you pay attention to one thing, you wind up missing some other detail. Even after multiple viewings. I had to watch this more times than any of the other Godard film currently in print just to make sure I caught enough of the details. As awesome technically as the film is, it somehow feels like a rehash of what he already did with First Name Carmen, Passion and Hail Mary. The fact that this was a commission may mean his heart wasn't quite in it. You could never accuse him of that with most of his other films.