An undercover narcotics detective dies, the investigation stalls, so the Detroit PD brings back Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), fired 18 months ago when a stray bullet hit a pregnant woman. Tellis teams with Lieutenant Henry Oak (Ray Liotta), a friend of the dead narc and an aggressive cop constantly under the scrutiny of Internal Affairs. They follow leads, informants turn up dead, Nick's wife is unhappy he's back on the street, Henry's protective of the dead cop's wife. What they uncover is a secret that could jeopardise them both.
Special Agent Matti
Narc is a hard-core cops and drugs movie. Jason Patric is good as the damaged detective climbing out of his personal hell: he manages to disguise his natural good looks behind an unrelenting misery will never forgetting the fact that his character is excessively intelligent. In fact, Detective Nick is a bit like Detective Robert Goran from Law & order: Criminal intent as they are both obsessive about their cases (Nick is not autistic, however) and suck information into their brains like a vacuum cleaner with those white beads from the bean bag. (I'm a lot like that, too: everything goes in and swirls around my unconscious until eventually some brilliant piece of perception pops out. Did you like the alliteration?)
Ray Liotta is, however, the driving force in Narc, playing hard-bitten maverick detective: harder-than-nails, bitterer-than-lemons, blood-on-his-hands. Despite not being a fan of Ray, I quite liked Lieutenant Oak's intensity and passion. Henry is a man with demons looking over his shoulder - that's a good thing to have in a dramatic thriller like this. Well written, Joe Carnahan.
There's a lot of running around and waving of guns and some good, old-fashioned police brutality, all of which add up to fun times in crime-land. The motto for Narc is "Go hard or go home". If that's how you like your movies, go see it.
R 18+ (Medium level violence)
105 minutes (1:45 hours)
Film: 14 August 2003
