Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Police Beat (2004)

September 27, 2010 in Film | Permalink

"Police Beat" is Pape Sidy Niang's only film credit.

One of the stranger and more beautiful films of the past decade, director Robinson Devor’s Police Beat is a tale of a West African immigrant trying to focus on his job as a Seattle bicycle cop while pining for his girlfriend who is away on a camping trip with a male friend. The misdemeanors and felonies he attends to are odd and disquieting, but perhaps no more than his attempts to understand the nature of love in his new country.

If everything seems surreal to two-wheeled rookie cop “Z” (Pape Sidy Niang), you can hardly blame him. Looking at humanity at its lowest is enough to make anyone think the world’s gone mad–and that’s what Z looks at for a living as he pedals across greater Seattle responding to calls. From bird murderers to struggling pimps to sexual adventurers who take the party too far, Z is in almost constant contact with a motley collection of crazed characters. He’s also having a hard time staying connected with his American girlfriend Rachel (Anna Oxygen), who he believes may be rekindling an old romance in a remote location.

Devor and co-writer Charles Mudede penned a brisk script, with understated narration by their leading man, who tries to talk himself into what may be a unrequited understanding with his girlfriend. But in between the battles in his own heart, Z must deal with the befuddling public. When he responds to a call from a woman who says that she’s been struck on the head by an unknown assailant outside her home, he quickly realizes that it was a branch from a tree in her yard that bloodied her. “Your tree is dead,” Z explains, “and if it’s not chopped down it will continue to harm and disturb the living.” But tree or no tree, it’s clear the living will have more moments in which they’re harmed and disturbed, Z included. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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