Here, as in his other movies A Nos Amours and Loulou, Pialat isn't interested in anything so prosaic as action. He's concerned with character. And, as in '50s B-movies, the way Pialat develops Mangin is to suggest that the measure of a man is what he does and how professionally he does it.
In the case of the furiously overworked Mangin, professionalism has nothing to do with how he acquits his task. It takes all the cop's lumbering energy just to keep pace on that treadmill called the Paris police force. His caseload is so overwhelming that it's just by accident or dumb luck that any criminals are brought to justice - if you can call Mangin's capricious jailings and releases of suspects justice. Mangin's world is, literally, catch as catch can, and issues of right and wrong are relative.
On the surface, Pialat's film is about how Mangin busts a gang of Tunisian- born heroin smugglers. But, all the better to study the nuts and bolts of Mangin's technique, Pialat drains his film of suspense. This enables us to see in the heart of Police a man whose heart is numbed by soul-destroying decisions.
Police unfolds as a series of stalemates between cop and criminal. Everybody cheats in these no-win games, and Mangin is too compromised to be strict about the rules. One morning, he will be giving the third degree to larcenous Noria (Sophie Marceau), a pouty beauty whose boyfriend is a notorious drug trafficker. That evening, once she's sprung from jail by Mangin's snaky friend, the lawyer Lambert (Richard Anconina), Mangin invites Noria for dinner and makes a pass - regrettably for him, incomplete.
