Homicide

A film about a homicide detective. Bobby Gold is a good interrogator. His job on the team is talking; he is the one who goes to the door, the one who persuades. Working on a large manhunt, he lands by chance on another scene: an old woman has been killed in a sweet shop. Gold does not want the case. The hunt is going on and he wants to be there. But the dead woman's family insists and the case is put on him; the reason is simple, Gold comes from the same community. That is the film's real subject. Gold has never taken any interest in being Jewish, defines himself only as a policeman, and for the first time is given work on the basis of belonging. As the investigation goes on the man is drawn in. He finds something in the shop's basement, makes contact with a group, and his professional identity and his newly found belonging start to conflict. The tension comes from that split: at every step he has to betray one of them. David Mamet wrote and directed. The dialogue is short, hard and repetitive; building police talk as a language of its own is the strongest thing in the film. Joe Mantegna plays Gold and William H. Macy his partner. Ving Rhames is in the cast. A tight production for anyone who likes police narratives and films about identity. For a viewer expecting a conventional investigation, the film drops the case halfway and goes somewhere else.