Critic Reviews

Far from being copraganda, A Cop Movie, the new feature from director Alonso Ruizpalacios (“Güeros,” “Museo”), is a formally daring and incisive deep dive into their performance of authority.

At times, A Cop Movie seems unnecessarily convoluted in its structure, but by the end, the brilliance of its design becomes clear: This is nothing short of an existential inquiry into what it takes to be a cop.

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios’ exciting and unpredictable look at a pair of Mexico City police officers blends documentary and narrative techniques to deliver a refreshing and innovative look at the challenges of modern-day police work — as well as the underlying corruption that makes the most earnest officers vulnerable to a system rigged against them.

The layering of styles and perspectives provides a sympathetic insight into the motivations and real life experiences of police officers working within a fundamentally corrupt system.

It’s a movie bristling with ideas and ingenuity.

Along with its trenchant, revelatory depictions and discussion of police work and related political ills, A Cop Movie pulls these hidden vectors of image-making, opinion-shaping power to the fore.

A Cop Movie is artistic activism at its finest, carefully treading the line of fact and fiction in a manner that illuminates rather than obfuscates.

Alonso Ruizpalacios voices a profound sense of powerlessness on the part of the police without sentimentalizing the abuses and biases of the profession.

A Cop Movie, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, is exceptionally challenging to begin with. As the movie unspools, and the layers of its production become clearer, we understand the challenge is the movie’s entire objective—up to a point.

The blurring of real testimony with a compassionate filmmaker’s inventions is so compelling that when the documentary portion arrives, the movie can’t help but sink a bit.