Hey folks, Harry here... I've seen NARC, like it a whole bunch, but when William Friedkin goes out and calls it the best cop movie he's ever seen... It just makes me wonder if Billy has seen: FRENCH CONNECTION, TOUCH OF EVIL, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, NAKED CITY, BULLIT, DIRTY HARRY, THE UNTOUCHABLES, ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, TICK.TICK.TICK., IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, HIGH NOON, THE BIG HEAT, THE DETECTIVE STORY, DETROIT 9000 and SHARKY'S MACHINE. I like NARC - personally towards the end I feel it gets a tad too he said, then he said, oh no then he said, then what he meant to say, and oh yeah here's how it goes... for me. Up until that point though, I was right there with the movie. The performances are dead to rights great. The cinema involved is absolutely arresting. I wouldn't say the end buckles the movie, it just is a bit unsteady for me. These other films were more consistently great throughout, but surely you can add NARC to the list, which... by the way... FRENCH CONNECTION is still the best cop movie ever made. Just hands down, it rules. Here ya go with a report from the DGA...
Dearest Harry, a friend took me to a screening tonight at the DGA in LA for Joe Carnahan's brilliant "Narc." And afterwards, there was a Q and A with Carnahan and WIlliam Friedken, who started off by saying that "Narc is the greatest cop movie I've ever seen." This by the many who won the Oscar for "The French Connection" for crying out loud!
I just read Jake Ryan's review of this film on this site and I have a bit more to add.
To begin, this movie is my fav so far this year and the opening sequence is the most riveting and mindblowing I've seen since "Saving Private Ryan." Is this film perfect? No. Is it great? YES! Carnahan and his DP, Alex Nepomniaschy, who also did "Safe" for Todd Haynes have proven to be a serious one-two creative punch of a team. Amazing that they shot this on a $3-4 million budget in only 28 days. It's the way movies should look. I actually liked the quad-screen sequence much better than Ryan did. Carnahan mentioned that that was shot the last day in Detroit with a skeleton crew and Jason Patric carrying the actual badge that belonged to their police liason. The people that he was going up to on the street and questioning really thought he was a cop.
As Jake Ryan pointed out, Jason Patric and Ray Liotta are both very good. But I'd like to mention the supporting players, especially Richard Chevolleua, John Ortiz and Busta Rhymes. These guys are major reasons this movie is so damn good. Each just explodes on screen.
I'm not going to mention much more about the film itself. JUST GO SEE IT!
As for Carnahan, he mentioned that not only does he have his Harrison Ford project at Universal, but he also has a labor of love at Paramount about Pablo Escobar. Other things Joe mentioned were that the reason he hired Alex as his DP was that when they met at LAX, Alex helped Joe with his bags. Joe knew that this was a good guy right there and then. He avoided any additional looping because he liked all the extra noise that drives most sound mixers mad and that it just seemed to fit the cinema verite mood of the movie. At one point, the lab held his footage hostage for six months because the financiers weren't paying them. He didn't get to see his last 18 days of dailies for half a year! "Not even a vhs tape." You should've seen the look on Carnahan's face when Friedken said it was the best cop movie ever. He said that that comment "from Billy Friedken will be something that I will always remember, man. Wow, that's unbelievable." (I'm paraphrasing here.) He was beeming like a fanboy, annointed into the pantheon.
T. Azimuth Schwitters
