Even Cops' Shouting Is Derivative

'NARC' NOISE CAN'T HIDE SCRIPT'S DEFICIENCIES

Jason Patric and Ray Liotta do a whole lot of shouting in "Narc," but I
wonder if the two actors ever sat down together and went over the script
quietly. If they had, they might have noticed that director Joe Carnahan's
story about a pair of tough Detroit cops had been cobbled from the remains
of so many other genre movies that there wasn't much to hang onto, save
borrowed cliches and attitude.

Then again, perhaps that's precisely why they spend so much of the film
with the volume turned up: They don't want us to hear the words, only the
noise.

"Narc" is nothing if not loud. The frenetic opening scene finds Patric's
character, an undercover narcotics detective named Nick Tellis, mad-dashing
after a drug-addled freak as a hand-held camera dogs their every step.

The freak -- eyeballs rolling, bullet-head gleaming, two long needles
clenched in one fist -- is so high that he's barely touching the ground,
yet not so high that he doesn't notice another man just passing through.
The druggie plunges the needles into the bystander's neck, the guy drops in
a foamy spasm and Nick throws himself down in a frantic, futile attempt to
help.

Then he's off running again, chasing his prey all the way to the
playground, where he nearly upends his career by shooting the wrong person.

This nerve-jangling opener bristles with wild style. The sound is a
syncopation of footfalls and heavy breathing, and the herky-jerky
cinematography, which brings to mind the Dogma film "Celebration,"
amplifies the sense of risk. Both the camera and the cop look as if they
might lose it (each seems out of control), but that's just part of the pose.

Like Al Pacino in "Serpico" and Russell Crowe in "L.A. Confidential," Nick
is the departmental rebel who always runs afoul of the system. At once
inside and outside the law, he carries his existential solitude right next
to his badge and gun, although in this case he's also hauling a load of
familiar pulp fiction.

After the playground shooting, Nick is pulled out of narcotics and put on a
murder investigation with an older cop named Henry Oak (Liotta), the type
of oversize swaggering rule-breaker for which Nick Nolte once held the
patent in movies such as "Q&A." (Over and over, every gesture and character
in "Narc" summons up yet another movie.) Together the cops tear Detroit
apart, terrorizing snitches in grubby apartments and in the bombed-out
vistas that now define the city's cinematic landscape.

Even with the ending in sight, it takes a long time for anything to happen.
Henry lectures Nick on the difference between law and justice; Nick stares
into space (Patric excels at such meaningful emptiness) as his incessantly
irritating wife (Krista Bridges) nags him to quit the force.

In movies like these, women tend to be either prostitutes or wives, and the
wives tend to be scolds or dead. That's part of the pulp fiction territory
that, however finite, offers up worlds of possibility. Carnahan, whose
first feature was a raucous, self-conscious crime blowout called "Blood
Guts Bullets & Octane," has a true believer's love of pulp.

But love isn't enough when you are playing movie cops and robbers. To
transcend cliche, movies like "Narc" need the passion of a heretic who can
take stock characters with their stock predicaments and turn them inside
out, the way Curtis Hanson and Quentin Tarantino do. Blood, guts and flash
aren't enough.

It's during a stakeout, when Henry tells Nick about his dead wife, that the
cliches and Carnahan's wild style reach an absurd crescendo. The two cops
are inside a parked car -- Henry in the front seat, Nick for some reason in
the back -- and the camera is prowling outside. Dimly lit, the cops are
barely visible, and, instead of focusing on Liotta's face during one of the
actor's biggest moments, Carnahan focuses on some overhanging trees,
crisply reflected in the car windows.

As he does throughout the movie, Liotta works hard to put his character
across, but it doesn't matter: You can't see the acting for either the
trees or the cinematography.

Narc

1/2

Rated: R (brutal violence, drug content, pervasive language)

Cast: Ray Liotta, Jason Patric

Director-writer: Joe Carnahan

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes