I was really thrilled by "36 Quai Des Orfèvres" (aka Department 36) ... for once you could feel a real policeman tale by an ex-cop. I am slightly disgusted by MR 73. I agree with the first comments I read on IMDb. The film is bleak, spooky, desperate and after the introductory minutes no one wants to laugh anymore. What's more, the ideology under the images is debatable to say the least. Criminals stay criminals whatever the amount of redeeming they show off.If they're given a conditional release after 20 years of prison, kill them before they can commit a new murder ! Good cops stay good cops, whatever the amount of drinking and "petty demeanors" such as high-jacking a bus for example they can be responsible of. Auteuil plays an ex-good cop: he drinks like a fish, high-jacks a bus to get back home with his policeman gun and is retrograded as a heavy sentence to another service of Marseille's police ! he steals crucial evidences, acts as the local Zorro with a fellow policeman who finds death in the process in company of the serial killer ... and he's given the retirement sack (with 70 % of wages)...only because the criminal himself (credibility rebuke)happens to be the son of a high rank officer of the Police. In what Republic are we supposed to live ? This film is certainly not a defense and illustration of the glorious french police corp, rather the contrary. I give a 7 though, for the quality of filming and interpretation.
Review of The Last Deadly Mission
