As a cop this actor is pathetic but fascinating. A serial killer is at work in New York, using poetic ads in the Village Voice to attract his preys. But in fact he is not the killer really but the real prey of the killer who is
the woman, at first they thought, the police, and they are wrong of course. So our cops dress up as bar waiters and poetic lovers and they start dating women in a bar via some nice poems in the Village Voice. Of course in the lot they manage to catch the good one, but in the meantime our cop has fallen in love with her and he is unable to see straight. He is so shocked when he discovers she is connected with the victims that he stops thinking and he wants her to commit one more crime and he frightens her to death and she leaves. It is then someone rings at the door and what a surprise, a colleague of his, a cop,
you go and discover the details. Sordid, bleak, miserable, and that sea of love is just spilled over, a real tsunami. The actor is so good that he makes us believe two things. For one cops have special eyes and anyone can recognize them by the way they look at you or anything. And for two that a cop in love is like a whale out of the sea, dying because he is crushed by his own weight, that of his gun and badge, and crushing everything around himself like the big fat monster he is. One of these actors of the old generation who were, and some of them still are and have taught the trade to a few younger ones, able to impersonate any part, any role, any situation as if they were chameleons. That's rare, my gosh, that's rare but so good when you meet one from time to time. That thriller is "The Experts" plus a good touch of humane and human depth. Let's hope competition and the crisis helps Hollywood to ask their actors to relearn that trade of old and begin again composing their characters from inside and not as if they were some kind of costumes you don over your evening jacket or dress.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID