36 Quai des Orfevres

Herald rating: * * * *

A gritty and gripping addition to last year's festival programme, this cop v cop thriller is pretty mainstream fodder lifted into something special by the pairing of two great French actors, who have between them almost 250 screen credits.

Director Marchal, a former cop who says the film is based on a true story, specifically credits Michael Mann's Heat as an influence, but this film is as French as pastis. It belongs to the genre the French call the policier and it's a slick, hard-edged, violent piece of work with a plot so labyrinthine that the details would probably only surrender to a second viewing.

The title is the address of the national CID headquarters, a name as familiar to the French as Scotland Yard is to the English. Leo Vrinks (Auteuil) and Denis Klein (Depardieu) head up rival units both charged with bringing in a violent gang that has been staging high-stakes, high-risk robberies.

The implication is that the successful one will get the newly vacant job as CID head.

Cue a rivalry that plays out as a fight to the death and explores one of the oldest conundrums in cop flicks: how legitimate is it for a cop to bend, or even break, the law if the aim is to catch lawbreakers.

It's literally a classic quandary. Marchal cites The Count of Monte Cristo as an inspiration which is hardly surprising: one of the writers, a former senior cop, did time for corruption on a rap that the director says was a frame-up.

The film-makers do such solid material proud. It's a hard film about hard men and it's hard to imagine it being better done.

CAST: Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu, Andre Dussollier
DIRECTOR: Olivier Marchal
RUNNING TIME: 110 mins
RATING: R16, violence, offensive language
SCREENING: Rialto