'Misanthrope': the director of 'Wild Tales' returns with a good policeman

The policeman is the new western.

In the generic and commercial sense, it is understood.

For some time now (long before in the case of Western cinema), the detective story is a genre that is practiced less and less in American cinema.

Television has taken over it, and it barely reaches theaters anymore.

But when one appears, as is also the case with Westerns, it is usually good or very good.

Misanthrope,

psychological intrigue, police procedural, apparent

serial killer

thriller , the first work in the United States by Argentine Damián Szifrón, creator of the successful

Wild Tales

(2014), does all of the above.

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This is how you make a perfect thriller for the cinema

Twenty-nine victims during the New Year celebration due to sniper shots from a window.

A single shot per victim, not a miss.

A professional, a madman.

Who is he, what does he want?

That's where a film begins that flees from action and spectacle, although it finally has it.

Szifrón prefers to show the consequences.

An elliptical work, with a lot of off-screen (the fashionable resource).

Remarkable, dark, nihilistic, ideological.

And despite everything, intense.

For the most part, the reviews from American newspapers and specialized media have been terrible.

Also, for the most part, the reviews from Argentinians and Latin Americans have been excellent.

Also in France.

And although the critic's job is in no way to criticize other critics, perhaps it is to analyze the social and political dynamics of cultural, artistic and journalistic reflection.

And there can enter a discussion about what may have bothered North Americans so much about

Misanthrope

compared to those in the South.

Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo and Shailene Woodley, in 'Misanthrope'.

It seems evident that the insistent political criticism of the system, of the entire system, contained in Szifrón's film may be at its base: the obvious problem of the United States with the sale of weapons and the control mechanisms depending on who gets to buy them;

the deep-rooted tradition of the chain of teaching from parents to children about the handling of weapons;

the networks of

ultra

filth that run rampant on the Internet, spreading hatred in both the violent and the resentful, as well as in the weak-minded, making them part of a powerful group;

the fierce criticism of the diatribes of the far-right masses, without ever having to verbalize the name and surname of the former president who once again aspires to the presidency;

the social and labor difficulties of the working class;

and, finally, the

conspiracy

theories responsible for inoculating the feeling that every measure of the executive branch to try to protect the population is an excuse for the contempt of civil rights and liberties.

The dichotomy between freedom and security, which is also the order of the day in countries as different from the United States as Ecuador and El Salvador.

And, most importantly, all of that is what can turn someone into the misanthrope of the title.

“Sometimes I think I would get along better with myself if the rest of the people were eliminated,” says the criminal's mirror character: a rank-and-file police officer in the city of Baltimore, where the film is set, who is recruited by the head of the FBI in charge, thanks to those peculiar personal characteristics (“Aggressive, addicted, antisocial”), and played with her usual finesse and that permanently sad face by Shailene Woodley.

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Read all the movie reviews here

Misántropo

is a police

thriller

with a serial killer, entertaining and adult, that does not play with fireworks, but rather with individual and collective psychological analysis;

that without having to invent anything it fulfills what it promises;

and that without reaching the excellence of major works like

Zodiac

and

Seven,

tries to ascend to that place where the generation of filmmakers of political commitment of the seventies reigned (Lumet, Pollack, Pakula): the posing of the most appropriate questions about the evils of the society of his time.

Misanthrope

Director:

Damián Szifrón.

Starring:

Shailene Woodley, Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo, Ralph Ineson. 

Police genre

.

USA, 2023.

Duration:

119 minutes.

Premiere: February 2.

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