POLICE BEAT
**** out of *****
Reviewed by Mandroid3000

Screening in the 2006 New Zealand International Film Festival
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Genres
Crime
Drama

2005
Directed by
Robinson Devor
Written by
Robinson Devor & Charles Mudede
Cast
Pape Sidy Niang .... Z
Anna Oxygen …. Rachel
Eric Breedlove …. Swan
Sarah Harlett …. Mary
Elijah Geiger …. Jeff
Scott Meola …. Hedge Trimmer
Larry Coffin …. Bum in Bushes
Tera Buerkley …. Dollar-a-Pop Girl
Brandon Whitehead …. Masturbator Man
Dolores Patricelli …. Masturbator Home Owner
Jeremy Meyer …. Drowning Man
Patricia Decell …. Dead Tree Woman
Jerry Lloyd …. Goose Killer

Police Beat follows Z, a Senagalese immigrant working as a police officer in Seattle, for one strange week. In this week his girlfriend, Rachel, goes on a camping trip with her room mate Jeff and Z is left to go about his job. Z often pays only half a mind to the strange cases he comes across; he’s frequently more interested in using someone’s phone to try and call Rachel than in dealing with cases. As Z deals with some very strange incidents (all taken from Seattle police records) his disillusionment grows with love and with his lonely life in America.

Police Beat relies heavily on narration by Z, and while an over use of narration is often frowned upon, I’m glad co-writers Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede ignored that. The use of narration works perfectly to get us into Z’s mind. It’s necessary because the film isn’t a chronicle just of the events themselves, but Z’s view of them. So in the middle of a domestic dispute people’s arguments will fade into the background as he’ll start thinking about his girlfriend. He’ll even imagine scenes with his own voice dubbed over all of the characters.

The narration is done in the Wolof dialect; along with the dreamlike photography, meditative soundtrack and bizarre cases, the film makes Seattle seem Gothic. The cases are outlandish but believable, take a look at the brief cast list above to get an idea of the types of things Z deals with (there are also characters called ‘Bloody Bakery Man’ and ‘Hair Grabber’). The result feels like we’re given a different view of reality, not a fictionalised fantasy land. Police officers everywhere probably have a different view of the city to ordinary residents, but double that for a new immigrant to a country holding that job.

The access Z gets being a police officer gives him a very different look at America from the idealised view he seems to have arrived with. He takes a class on the American presidents, yet tickets a cyclist who tells him he’d like to kill President Bush. He wants to be a responsible man with a good job and a family, yet thinks that the women he comes across don’t want that. All around him are weird, superstitious happenings, people acting corruptly, and strange men strangling geese. It’s no wonder that after being abandoned and witness to all this he yearns to be back in Senegal with his family.

Police Beat is a beautiful, mysterious and hypnotic film. It shows the weird ways of a Western city through an African immigrant’s eyes, and it’s a good drama of a man who came to a new land and found it and its people to be far different than he thought.

This film will screen in Wellington on July 28th at 4:00pm at the Soundings Theatre, Te Papa. Refer to the Film Fest homepage for more information.

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