I had high hopes for 36. A French crime thriller directed by Olivier Marchal, touted as the gallic Heat, and starring Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu, all the signs were that this would be a policier of distinction. And for a while it did a good job of pulling me in, with a strong opening sequence in which distinguishing the cops from the bad guys is made intentionally difficult.

So far so good. Sad to say then, that as the film went on it reminded me less of epic Michael Mann size cinema than a bloated version of a tv cop show. The prime culprit is the dialogue, which is appallingly on the nose much of the time. Characters come on, tell you what they think and feel and why they are motivated to be that way, and exit having imparted their plot point. The most egregious example is the dismal line ‘Putting Leo behind bars won’t make you dream again Denis’. Admittedly this is subtitled, but I can’t think of any variation on that theme that would make the translation less painful. Plus, the sentiment is just way off for a tale of badass cops. Putting people behind bars is par for the course in such tales, but one reason it’s not typically done is to restore the fantasising capabilities of those locking them away.

It all falls sadly short, not just of Michael Mann’s majestic Heat, but also of quality police tv dramas such as The Shield. Those French cops think they’re bad muthas, strutting about in their black leather jackets, but Vic Mackey and his crew could eat them for breakfast without need of a glass of pastis to wash them down.

36 is the antithesis of a film that I keep coming back to, Sexy Beast. The latter’s script is all allusion and subtext, a twisted love story about the relationship of two gangsters where one man is content to put his past behind him and enjoy the present, and the other is a seething mass of emotions he can’t control and that lead him to appalling violence. One hasn’t got much to say, the other can’t say it. Compare to the eloquent detectives of 36, who tell you exactly why they’re doing things as they’re doing them, just in case there was any room for doubt in your mind. The thing being, there should be doubt. Nobody truly knows why they’re doing what they do, and — in screenplays at least — the more conflict there is between action, emotion, and self-image the better.

On paper, 36 does everything right, what with conflicting characters who end up on opposite sides, one ascending to leadership, the other plummeting to jail for his actions, and compelled to act against the former when he ends up being responsible for the death of the latter’s wife. That should be the stuff of big emotions, but because the characters insist on explaining their feelings and what they’re going to do as a consequence of them, it all comes across like a soap opera. A real waste of some real acting talent, and a clear case of a script that needed substantial development: the plot beats are fine, but the dialogue strips the story of any emotional power. And the responsibility for that lies in director Marchal’s hands, since he was responsible for the screenplay, after working with some other writers on the story itself.