Off Limits - We are the law

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Movie
German title Off Limits - We are the law
Original title Gardiens de l'ordre
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2010
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Nicolas Boukhrief
script Nicolas Boukhrief,
Dan Sasson
production Sylvie Pialat
music Nicolas baby
camera Dominique Colin
cut Lydia Decobert
occupation
synchronization

Off Limits - We are the law , also known as Undercover in Paris and Sphinx (original title: Gardiens de l'ordre ), is a 2010 French thriller directed by Nicolas Boukhrief .

action

With their new colleague Simon, the two police officers Julie and Bastien start their nightly patrol duty in the Paris metropolitan area . After a shop break-in, they are called to a case of nocturnal disturbance. When the troublemaker opens the door for them during the supposed routine operation and shoots Bastien with a gun, Julie and Simon return fire and shoot the young, completely drunk man down. Because the junkie in whose hand they find fluorescent pills is the son of an MP, Simon and Julie are forced by their supervisor to sign a false report according to which the politician's son was shot by mistake and he didn't been under the influence of drugs. When the young man wakes up from his coma and claims that the police officers shot first, Simon and Julie are threatened with suspension after they have already withdrawn from the field service. On the advice of their senior colleague Gilbert, the two young police officers decide on their own to investigate the new designer drug , which seems to make its users extremely aggressive, and to find the masterminds.

While Julie is confronted at the police station with a young, extremely aggressive man who also seems to have taken the drug, Simon learns about the amphetamine Sphinx in a nightclub , which is characterized by its luminous colors and is new on the market. The dealer Maxime offers him 100 pills for 1000 euros. With Julie's savings, Simon meets with Maxime, who leads him to a parking garage, where another dealer named Patrick is waiting for him. Patrick becomes suspicious, however. A fight ensues in which Simon shoots his opponent with his weapon. Julie then takes care of Simon's wounds in her apartment. Simon, who consumed one of the pills at Maxime's request and is now physically exhausted, wants to face the police. Julie, who is ready to continue her investigation without him, however, changes him.

Together they pay Maxime a visit in his apartment. Simon uses force to get Maxime to reveal the name of the man from whom he gets the Sphinx. They confiscate Maxim's drug supply and cash in the amount of 37,000 euros and later use them to move to an apartment that has been sealed by the police. The man betrayed by Maxime is Marc Bastide, the owner of a nightclub. By pretending to be a successful dealer couple from the Côte d'Azur with Maxime's drugs and cash, Julie and Simon also want to enter the local amphetamine market, they get into business with Marc and his followers. In the meantime, the two police officers, who have now also become closer privately, are suspended by their boss under pressure from the MP. Because Marc and his business partners, who manufacture the Sphinx themselves in a laboratory, want to make sure that Simon and Julie are not involved in the drug search, Simon is supposed to shoot Maxime who is tied up in a warehouse. He claimed to Marc that the money from a drug deal had been stolen from him. When Maxime recognizes the two policemen and threatens to blow them up, Julie Simon takes the gun from his hand and shoots Maxime.

When they need 60,000 euros for their next deal with Marc, Simon and Julie decide to steal the money seized by the police from a gang of forgers from the evidence room of the police station. While Julie gets the keys for the relevant evidence compartment on her last day at work and later triggers the smoke detector alarm with a lighter so that the colleagues can leave the building, Simon sneaks unrecognized through the parking garage into the police station. After grabbing the money and setting off a smoke bomb, they leave the building wearing gas masks. Simon disappears with the money and later picks up Julie by car, who leaves Gilbert a folder with the documents of her research.

In the evening they meet up with Marc in his nightclub. There, however, they are recognized by a Maxime customer as the couple who stole Maxime's money, whereupon Marc decides to drive with Julie to his drug villa, where the new fabric has already been made, while Simon and two of Marc's men make the to pick up 60,000 euros stored on them. There Simon shoots the two men down and forces one of them to give him the address of Marc's villa. Marc, who has taken a liking to Julie and is disappointed when she rejects him again, confronts her in the villa about Maxime and also about Patrick's death. When she gives him to understand that he is from the police, Marc and his men decide to disappear and cover their tracks in the villa beforehand. Rudy, his rough man, is supposed to take care of Julie. While Rudy knocks Julie down and chokes to the point of unconsciousness, Simon forcibly gains entry to the villa. In the laboratory, which is located in the basement, Simon meets Marc, who is busily distributing gasoline and then setting the laboratory on fire. Because a shot would lead to an explosion, Marc manages to knock Simon down with an iron bar. Simon finally shoots and there is an explosion. Julie, who managed to stab Rudy with a sharp object and shoot his way free, finds Marc aiming a gun at the unconscious Simon in the laboratory. When Marc shoots Julie instead, she kills him with two shots. While the police who have arrived on site are securing the situation and it is clear that, as great heroes of this case, it is difficult to dismiss them, Julie and Simon are wrapped in a blanket in each other's arms, contentedly.

background

The police thriller, the budget of 7.72 million euros, was the fifth feature film by former film critic Nicolas Boukhrief. The idea for the film came to Boukhrief when he read in a newspaper about a new drug that makes its users particularly aggressive. Originally, the plot was to focus solely on a male police officer. However, the producer of the film Sylvie Pialat recommended adding a female character to the story, whereupon Boukhrief and his co-writer Dan Sasson decided to make a police duo the focal point of the action. When meeting the director, Cécile de France immediately agreed to play the female lead without having read the script. Fred Testot , who took on the male lead, is best known in France as a comedian and was seen here for the first time in a serious role. Julien Boisselier , who plays the nightclub owner and dealer Marc in the film, had previously filmed the two thrillers Cash Truck (2004) and Cortex (2008) with Boukhrief .

La Défense, a location and location for the film (2009)

Boukhrief also came back to the cameraman Dominique Colin after these two films. During his work on Off Limits - We Are the Law , he used HD cameras to be able to film the many dark night and club scenes in high resolution without great effort and the associated higher costs. The film was shot in 2009 in the Paris suburbs of Courbevoie and Puteaux and in the La Défense office district located there . Boukhrief had worked three times with Nicholas Baby , who wrote the score. The soundtrack, which is characterized by electro beats, also includes several specially selected tracks of the club music that was current at the time:

  • No Needs for Machine by Dada Life
  • Happy Hands & Happy Feet from Dada Life
  • Let's Get Bleeped Tonight from Dada Life
  • Trance Function by Midimiliz
  • Idealistic from digitalism
  • Find a Way by Round Four feat. Paul St. Hilaire
  • Gets Close to Me (Schatrax Mix) by Junesex
  • Pagans from Skatebård
  • Quicksand (Autokratz Drags to Riches Mix) from La Roux

Off Limits - We Are the Law came to French cinemas on April 7, 2010, where the thriller saw 111,563 viewers. In Germany, the film was shown for the first time on August 24, 2010 at the Fantasy Film Festival in Berlin . It was released on DVD on February 25, 2011. Under the title Undercover in Paris , it was broadcast for the first time on German free TV on March 18, 2013 by ZDF .

Reviews

Le Journal du Dimanche wrote that Off Limits - We are the law is “nothing revolutionary”, but despite the “brutality of the action scenes” one feels connected to the two “heroes”, especially since patrolmen get off badly in other thrillers far too often. The result was a “good little French B-movie”, the cast of which contributed decisively to the viewer's enjoyment. Cécile de France embodies “a policewoman as one would like to see her more often in reality”. L'Express found the film too predictable in places to be able to build on the success of Nicolas Boukhrief's Cash Truck . “The director's passion for genre cinema”, according to L'Express , is enough to “save” his thriller. The "often very dark" film is "illuminated" by a Cécile de France who "stands out as always" and by a Fred Testot who has "never been so scary".

Le Monde saw all kinds of “improbabilities” in “the already limited scenario” of the film. With de France and Testot, the director also opted for “an unusual cast” for the two main roles. All in all, the film is "not unworthy", but also not completely convincing, since neither the protagonists nor the "very bad" antagonists are really believable. Le Parisien stated that one was quickly disillusioned with the film, which was not due to the two main actors, “who do what they can”, nor to the “nerve-wracking and breathless” production, but to the script, which was full of “ Incredibility "is.

"No frills developed, quite credibly told cop thriller about two protagonists who follow their moral impulses," was the opinion of the film service . The film magazine Cinema, on the other hand, also pointed to "the many shallows of the nervous story" that the director had "whitewashed with speed and attractive actors". In summary, Cinema also said : "Tough, but flat and ultimately stereotypical."

For Jordan Mintzer of Variety , Off Limits was a “very old-fashioned” thriller that could have been from the 1980s. He is saved from time to time by the “tight direction” and the “brave performances” by de France and Testot. The film, which is likely to have a hard time outside of France and Belgium, reminds “superficially” of Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void , but compared to Noé's film, it appears “not real and threatening enough”. That is regrettable, "because certain action scenes", such as the "well coordinated break-in" into the evidence room of the police station, "are handled with impressive ease". The two main characters have a “strong chemistry”, but their characters rely mainly on “pure energy and questionable instincts” instead of their intellect. Nicolas Baby's electronic music is - "apart from a memorable opening melody à la Ennio Morricone " - "just as standardized" as the rest of the film.

Awards

In the in South Korea held Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival ran Off Limits - We are the law in 2010 in the competition for the prize of the festival.

German version

role actor Voice actor
Julie Cecile de France Tanja Geke
Chief inspector Nicolas Marié Eberhard Haar
Gilbert Stéphan Wojtowicz Helmut Gauss
Sandrine Nanou Garcia Katarina Tomaschewsky
Bastien Emeric Marchand Alexander Doering

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clearance Certificate for Off Limits - We are the law . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2010 (PDF; test number: 124 402 V).
  2. ↑ a b cf. jpbox-office.com
  3. ↑ a b c cf. allocine.fr
  4. ↑ cf. courbevoieetmoi.fr
  5. ↑ Off Limits - We Are the Law in the online movie database , accessed June 19, 2020.
  6. ^ “Rien de révolutionnaire mais la brutalité des scenes d'action n'empêche pas une proximité chaleureuse avec ses deux 'héros' […]. Intrigue, la distribution participe du plaisir à regarder cette bonne petite série B à la française. […] Cécile de France […] compose une fliquette comme on aimerait en voir plus souvent dans la réalité. " Jean-Pierre Lacomme: Cécile de France mène l'enquête . In: Le Journal du Dimanche , April 3, 2010.
  7. ↑ “Mais la passion du réalisateur pour le cinéma de genre suffit à sauver son polar […]. C'est sombre comme souvent, éclairé par une Cécile de France ciselée comme toujours et un Fred Testot inquiétant comme jamais. ” Christophe Carrière: Gardiens de l'ordre, attendu mais authentique . In: L'Express , April 7, 2010.
  8. ↑ “Sur ce scénario déjà limite, relativement prodigue en invraisemblances […], Nicolas Boukhrief joue cependant une carte audacieuse avec le casting improbable de son tandem héroïque […]. Le résultat n'est pas indigne […], comme d'ailleurs en leurs antagonistes, qui ne ménagent pourtant pas leurs efforts pour paraître très méchants. " Jacques Mandelbaum: “Gardiens de l'ordre”: deux hirondelles ne font pas le printemps . In: Le Monde , April 6, 2010.
  9. ↑ “Ni du tandem Fred Testot-Cécile de France, qui font ce qu'ils peuvent, ni de la réalisation, nerveuse et haletante, mais d'un scénario qui accumule les invraisemblances.” See “Gardiens de l'ordre”: peu crédible * . In: Le Parisien , April 7, 2010.
  10. ↑ Off Limits - We are the law. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 19, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ↑ cf. cinema.de
  12. ↑ “This very old-school suspenser […] is occasionally rescued by […] Boukhrief's taut direction and hearty perfs by Cecile de France and Fred Testot. […] Pic bears a superficial resemblance to Gaspar Noe's […] Enter the Void . [...] Boukhrief's film never feels real or menacing enough. That's too bad, because certain action scenes - especially a well-paced break-in at the police precinct - are handled with impressive fluidity […]. De France […] and former TV comic Testot […] manage to generate strong chemistry […], but their characters never have the smarts one would hope for, mostly functioning on pure energy and questionable instincts. [...] Nicolas Baby's electro score, which, beyond a catchy opening melody a la Ennio Morricone, feels as standardized as everything else. " Jordan Mintzer: Sphinx . In: Variety , April 18, 2010.
  13. ↑ Off Limits - We are the law. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on June 19, 2020 .