Director Paul Negoescu treads very familiar thematic territory of contemporary Romanian cinema — institutionalised corruption, and unheroic men in meltdown mode due to societal demands that they live up to an image of strong masculinity and achieve outward markers of success — in his fourth feature Men of Deeds. Smalltown police chief Ilie (Iulian Postelnicu) is scrabbling to get the money together to buy a lot of land for an orchard, a dream he is pinning his hopes on as the foundation for building a home and family. Events take a decidedly sinister turn, pushing what begins as a downbeat portrait of mid-life unfulfillment into the more suspenseful realm of crime drama, when a dead body turns up, dispatched with an axe to the head, in the village.
Excitement stays dialed down for much of a film that favours a no-fuss realism true to the drudgery of everyday existence for Ilie, but a low-key, creeping unease simmers at an effective slow burn, to pay off in a bloody, absurd final act. The script, written by Radu Romaniuc and Oana Tudor, lacks the sharpness in deadpan black humour in its handling of inept law enforcement to match Romania’s real big-hitters of the genre such as Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective. But though wide release may elude it, its satirical barbs against ethically adrift officialdom should land hard enough to ensure Men of Deeds festival slots beyond its world premiere in competition at Sarajevo.
Men of Deeds could be termed a police procedural, were it not for the fact that Ilie’s preferred modus operandi in his professional life is not to take any action. He slinks around his rural town in the Moldavian north with a hangdog circumspection that is insufficient to take ownership of the authority enshrined in his police uniform (Postelnicu superbly captures his hapless shiftiness), literally looking the other way as acts of violence and underhand deals go down around him. Illegal activities are by no means rare in the settlement. An opportunistic mayor (Vasile Muraru) insists on his own way of doing things, and runs things in close consort with an equally corrupt priest (Daniel Busuioc), a relationship that baldly sums up abuses of power in the country and lampoons Romania’s supposed separation of church and state.
Many of the town’s residents have left to find work abroad, and within a dead-end air of hopelessness, those who remain make ends meet however they can. Ilie’s ongoing fiasco around selling the apartment he co-owns, only to find he would still come up short in affording an orchard, underlines that doing deals straight offers little means financially to get ahead in life. Ilie’s earnest underling at the station, Vali (Anghel Damian), approaches his role with all the idealistic commitment to justice that his boss is unable to muster, which makes him a threat to the powerful in the town, who prefer that nobody nose around in their unsavoury activities. When the murder is declared an “accident” to avoid involving the prosecutor’s office and a scapegoat is sought, Vali, detecting a cover-up, attempts to investigate independently, despite Ilie’s admonishments and efforts to sideline him.
As the pushback against Vali dangerously escalates, Ilie cuts an increasingly haunted figure, forced as he is to confront his own unprincipled complicity and decide whether to stay silent and win his dream as the fruit of dirty bribery. His guilt is compounded by his feelings for the dead man’s widow Cristina (Crina Semciuc), a woman ogled and intimidated in a patriarchal milieu of brute objectification and aggression.
Men of Deeds can seem tonally uneven as it shifts between Ilie’s listless, personal ennui of stunted ambition and the subterranean, night-time goings-on in the town. Its ultimate point, that crime doesn’t pay and the impetus to change one’s ways is often too little too late, is delivered in a final shoot-out set piece that pushes the unheroic, unglamorous, and downright messy nature of violent community breakdown into farce, with a brutal finality that, while stretching credibility, will titillate those who like their gore outlandish and irreverent.
Director: Paul Negoescu
Screenplay: Radu Romaniuc, Oana Tudor
Cast: Iulian Postelnicu, Anghel Damian, Vasile Muraru, Crina Semciuc, Daniel BusuiocProducer: Anamaria Antoci
Cinematography: Ana Draghici
Editing: Eugen Kelemen
Production designer: Vanina Geleva
Music: Marius Leftãrache
Production companies: Tangaj Production (Romania), Papillon Film (Romania), Screening Emotions (Bulgaria), Avanpost Production (Romania)
World sales: Patra Spanou
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition)
In Romanian
105 minutes
