good back-story, and good acting

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Worse than bad: insensitive and dull. Takes a very sensitive subject and essentially turns it into a vigilante movie. The cops are thuggish, boorish witch-hunters. The alleged criminals are stereotypical, one-dimensional, uncaring morons. And every man is a pedophile.Heaps of random shouting contests, for the hell of it.In addition, everything happens at a snail's pace, and with many totally unconnected events. Incredibly dull.Performances are terrible. No depth, and all rather stereotypical. Very unconvincing. I don't think I've disliked the "heroes" of a movie more than than I did in this movie.(Spoiler alert) It is French, so the movie wouldn't be complete with a totally random death at the end. This is no exception. Even trumps your average French movie for totally random endings.Avoid.

It started quite well, but after a while, I found it incomprehensible the way the team handle the cases. They were so extremely aggressive and often quite vile: asking the woman about her sex life in a such a rude manner, as she was the culprit or the girl who lost her phone, laughing in her face. Or the way the harass the girl who's just had a stillbirth. Really? This is how police deal with sensitive cases? I don't think so. And multiple agents interviewing people seemed unreal as well. Dealing with some of the crimes would no doubt be hard to deal with and difficult to keep emotions in check, but there is no professional conduct, no calm, collective approach or even respect and that seems outrageous. Shocking film.

At any given time there are upwards of a dozen French actresses - spanning several decades - working in cinema, any one of whose name on a marquee is sufficient to draw me to the box-office irrespective of whether the given actress is working with unknowns or with a cast of her peers of both sexes. In the second decade of the 21st century the pickings are rich; Danielle Darrieux, who made her name in the thirties is still with us and worked as recently as 2010, Micheline Presle, who rose to prominence in the forties is always prepared to don the old slap any time her daughter, Toni Marshall directs a new film, Jeanne Moreau, first seen in the early fifties remains fully active and from the sixties we have Catherine Deneuve, arguably the doyenne of present day French cinema. After Deneuve the deluge, Isabelle Huppert, Nathalie Baye, Fanny Ardant, Isabel Carre, Carole Bouquet, Sandrine Bonnaire, Mathilde Seigneur, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Cecile de France, Nicole Garcia, Agnes Jouai, Valerie Lemercier, the list goes on. It was an actress who drew me to Polisse; when I turned up at the cinema all I knew about Polisse was that it featured Karin Viard, what I didn't know was that it also featured Marina Fois and Sandrine Kimberlain and above all this I didn't know what it took me five minutes, tops, to realize, that it was a GREAT film with an equally great ensemble cast that includes writer-director Maiwenn. It has the authenticity of a documentary and one reviewer here has compared it to Le Petit Lieutenant, a reasonable comparison although I tend to think of it in the same breath as L.627. No matter, Polisse stands alone as a record of the Child Protection Unit in Paris and Maiwenn gives us the whole thing from soup to nuts, from the child victims to the adult abusers to the tight-knit unit seeing human sorrow and human evil day after day, week after week and often unable to remain aloof. It's actually quite a long film but it seems like only minutes such is the power of the ensemble. Ten stars going away.

What an excellent film! Full of good dialogue that feels real and down to earth it was not surprising to hear Maiwenn say (at the Sydney Film Festival Q&A) she had spent time with the real CPU. The reality of the emotions and the truthfulness of the situations this team faced was evident and really made the difference to this film. What stops the review getting full marks is the films tendency to let some of the less interesting scenes play for too long. Oddly it's also the love story she included to make the film seem less bleak and Maiwenn's own character that become unnecessary and make the movie overburdened and run a little too long. The cast is absolutely fantastic and engaging. Their relationships heartfelt and natural; you would think they had been playing this together for years. This is a movie of the tougher, grimy side of a city. It presents the human behaviours we shudder to believe exist. And yet, handled so superbly, you will not feel wrung out or overwhelmed. It's a terrific movie that will have you talking for a long time.