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Police Beat
Northwest Film Forum

Police Beat reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 58 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.0 out of 10
based on 10 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 1 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Pape Sidy Niang, Anna Oxygen, Eric Breedlove, Sarah Harlett, and Elijah Geiger

Police Beat is both a strikingly poetic examination of displacement and a gently surreal compendium of criminal behavior. Z, a young Senegalese and Muslim man, experiences his adopted city of Seattle through his job as a bicycle cop, leading him to encounters with all manner of strange and troubled people. Z himself, however, is less concerned with his job than with the possibility that his American girlfriend may be cheating on him while on a camping trip with a male friend. (Director's Statement)


GENRE(S): Crime  |  Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Robinson Devor
Charles Mudede
 
DIRECTED BY: Robinson Devor  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: April 28, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 
LANGUAGE(S): English / Wolof (with English subtitles) 

Nominated, Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic), 2005 Sundance Film Festival; Someone to Watch Award (Robinson Devor), 2006 Independent Spirit Awards

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...

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
Pape Sidy Niang is terrific as the cop, Z, who is viewing America through a new immigrant's eyes.
Read Full Review
70
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Quietly unsettling in its vision of modern-day isolation.
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70
Village Voice Rob Nelson
Dreamlike in style, Police Beat is also a real-world vision of what American indies could be if they dared to recognize the drama in our own neighborhoods.
Read Full Review
70
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
A delicately funny tale about everyday surrealism.
Read Full Review
63
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
An offbeat, poetic piece that eschews the terse, hard-boiled style of the standard cop movie or TV show for something softer-centered and more nakedly emotional.
Read Full Review
60
Variety Joe Leydon
Distinctive, physically ravishing indie is a natural for fests, but it's questionable whether this sometimes involving, sometimes obscure pic will have appeal beyond the specialty market.
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50
San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
A bizarre original from the bizarrely original director.
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50
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Looks great, and the performances are solid, but the disparate elements in this oddity - which created a minor stir at the Sundance Film Festival last year - never entirely coalesce.
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50
The Hollywood Reporter James Greenberg
Soulful performance by non-pro Pape Sidy Niang as the bicycle-riding police officer Z, gives the film a poetic tone, but cumulative impact is diffused rather than enhanced by the fractured form.
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40
Film Threat Peter Hanson
The most frustrating aspect of Police Beat is that it's clear everyone involved has great talent...Too bad all their efforts are lost in the service of pointless material.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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