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Le Petit Lieutenant
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 19 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Cédric Anger
Xavier Beauvois
Guillaume Bréaud
Jean-Eric Troubat
Directed by: Xavier Beauvois
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 8, 2006
DVD: April 10, 2007
Running Time: 110 minutes, Color
Origin: French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Nathalie Baye, Jalil Lespert, Roschdy Zem, Antoine Chappey, Jacques Perrin, Bruce Myers, Patrick Chauvel, and Jean Lespert
A gripping police noir, Le Petit Lieutenant tells the story of Antoine, an ambitious young cop from the provinces who joins a plainclothes crime unit in Paris. Antoine spends his days eagerly awaiting his first assignment, drinking with his fellow detectives, and developing and unlikely relationship with his superior, a veteran policewoman with a troubled past. But when the body of a drifter is found murdered along the Seine, a seemingly routine investigation suddenly turns violent and forever changes all their lives. (Cinema Guild)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
More than on "Prime Suspect," more than any film in recent memory, Le Petit Lieutenant conveys the relentless toll of big-city police work.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Nathalie Baye is remarkable in Le Petit Lieutenant where she plays Caroline Vaudieu, a Parisian police inspector who returns to her post after a bout with alcoholism following her child's death.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A quiet powerhouse of a film, an implacable, uncompromising French police drama, both old-fashioned and modern, that underlines the reasons impeccably made crime stories do so well on screen.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
A flinty, almost hardhearted work about characters who have lost almost everything in pursuit of some undefinable abstraction, like honor or their country or doing the right thing. It's an impressive film, but don't expect any warm fuzzies.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Le Petit Lieutenant embraces the spectrum of human drama and comedy, and like a lot of French films it is keenly involved with the everyday pulse of work.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
The final minute of the movie is one of the most bleak, and moving, endings I've seen in years.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
This is the fourth film directed and at least co-written by Beauvois. (He has acted in a number of pictures, including a previous one of his own, and he is in Le Petit Lieutenant for a while.) He is a clean and sure director, with a good selective eye: he knows where we ought to be looking at any moment. We can hope for more Beauvois films with worlds of their own.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
On the surface, Le Petit Lieutenant is propelled by the search for two Russians somehow responsible for a pair of murders along the Seine. And though that's a pretty mundane setup for an urban drama, it serves nicely in allowing us to get to know the haunted Caroline and the impetuous Antoine.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A fine, taut, tough example of the realistic police drama.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The movie's realism is unimpeachable, though American cops might be stunned by the idea of a half-dozen detectives being assigned to the murder of an anonymous floater.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Light on visceral thrills and heavy on the quotidian rhythms of life on the force, Xavier Beauvois' police procedural owes more to "Prime Suspect" and "Hill Street Blues" than it does to any film genre.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
The drama's moments of cinematic power more than compensate for the slow-moving stretches that don't connect, and its characters will stay with viewers long after the lights go up.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Le Petit Lieutenant shows how good French movies can be when they stay French and don't try to go international.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
In the end, the film belongs to Baye, a veteran French actress who handles the part with toughness and vulnerability without overselling either facet of her character.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Leighton Klein
You can sense Baye's struggling within the limits imposed on her. In her own way, she can convey the heat of a Penelope Cruz, the power of Mirren, the barely contained madness of Judi Dench -- but not here. They're just not on the beat she's been given.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
The only thing that enlivens Beauvois' anti-thriller is Baye's beautiful performance.
Read Full Review >Variety Leslie Felperin
Seems so determined to reproduce the drudgery of police work, it's boring for the first hour, and only marginally more exciting for the second.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Beauvois, who co-wrote, seems hellbent on making the most realistic cop film of all time, shruggingly consumed with downtime, small talk, minor incident, and dead ends, and he's succeeded--the narrative wouldn't have cut it in a Kojak story meeting.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Keeps such a lazy pace, with so many scenes that fail to move the story forward, that it should be cited for failing to meet the minimum speed for a crime drama.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it an8:
When Caroline(Nathalie Baye) asks Antoine(Jalil Lespert) why he became a cop, the young lieutenant cites the movies as an influence. "Le Petit Lieutenant" isn't "In the Heat of the Night", this crime-drama won't be luring any young impressionable kids to the force, not with its depictions of office work and tedious interviews with an uncolorful assortment of witnessess. As Antoine drives around Paris for the first time in a cop car, he simulates the high-speed chases of his movie-going days to get out of traffic. In doing so, he makes the audience aware that "Le Petit Lieutenant" is attempting something atypical of the police procedural genre; which is, that on most days, being a policeman can be a pretty unremarkable job. For most of its running time, the only time a gun gets fired is at a shooting range. "La Petit Lieutenant" deepens considerably when Caroline overtakes Antoine as the film's protagonist. We're unsure if she sees her subordinate as a surrogate son, or a potential lover. This enigma makes her face an interesting mask to study.
George L. gave it a10:
A spare, beautifuly crafted film that takes the police genre to a deeper level while delivering on the action and suspense.
Kevin A gave it a9:
Wonderful realism - essentially the antithesis of the Lethal Weapon movies. Detectives are actually humans who have (most of the time) relatively dull jobs. This film led me into a world I was previously unfamiliar with, as other detective films always marked of non-realism. That's a great job of the film, no?
Filmfan gave it a5:
This is not a bad film, but it is just totally unexceptional in every way. TV drama caliber.
Jay W. gave it a7:
A realistic police procedural done in semi-documentary style and with French verve. Wonderful ensemble cast. Could have used a heavier hand in the editing department.
Michael W. gave it a10:
This is the best police film I've seen -- and I'm no youth. Nathalie Baye is brilliant. I find criticisms of superbly rendered films for their "slow pacing" to be juvenile...but to each his/her own.
