Bad Investigate

Great action movie. Superb direction, great casting, excellent sound editing, with an engaging screenplay, with some deeply hilarious dialogues. Congratulations for this movie.

To make things very brief; there a lot of characters most of them corrupts cops, killers cheating husbands and wifes and very few innocent and poor FBI guy who is completely lost and deceived and a good cops who is perhaps one of hateful characters in the movie.

And most important two main characters; two private investigators that are really scum of society.

There is comedy comedy here; a very dark one; but also is a thriller and people get killed and blown up.

This is a Portuguese movie; action scenes are well done but do not expect a budget for spectacular chases or explosions; however the writing is quite good and characters are very well defined; particularly the secondary ones.

The major drawback is the pace. At a little more than two hours; the movie lags many times and the main characters are not always funny enough to keep it going until the thriller part kicks in again and the rhythm re-establish.

In brief; it is an interesting and quite original movie with even a few unexpected twists (and kills).

When Romeo, a corrupt deputy commissioner police (JD Duarte), forces two pocket-sized hamsters, Alex and Cid (Luís Ismael and Francisco Menezes), to deceive an FBI agent Sam Folkes (Eric da Silva) , the crime is internationally. His mission is to pursue Xavier, a dangerous dealer on a revenge route (Enrique Arce), and it has everything to go wrong.

This is the return of director Luis Ismael after the last chapter of the trilogy "Balas e Bolinhos".

It is inevitable that anyone who sees this new "Bad Investigate" compares it to the previous saga, and the humor is still very present, however there was a greater concern for the production values and for the screenplay.

There are hilarious moments, very smart dialogues and very funny characters, in particular JD Duarte as Romeu who steals the show in every scene that he is in and Francisco Meneses, who plays the dumb but always funny Cidalio, or Cid as he prefers to be called, Never forgetting of course, Enrique Arce who plays Xavier seriously and with great quality. Perfect villain.

The film has a bit of everything, comedy, action and even some drama, and more serious tone, especially when the story moves to Galicia, in my point of view, the highest point of this film.

It's a very well done film, which did not get even better because of budget constraints, because it is the kind of movie that asks for even more elaborated action scenes.

In the end it's 2 hours with no boring moments, a movie with action, comedy, crime and mystery, another triumph on the part of the Portuguese cinema and it's a type of film that should be explored more in our cinema.

7,5/10

Great Portuguese thriller/ comedy, trying to approach the good quality from the American movies with the same style. Portuguese cinema has improved a lot in the last years, and this one is an excellent example of good entrapment, well directed and well shoted. I would recommend to everyone who likes this gender of movies. And the type of humour? from the North, of course.

If you go into this movie expecting a typical, slow Portuguese film, or even something out of the comedic 'Balas & Bolinhos' franchise (by the same director), you're gonna have a bad time. I'm a fan of 'Balas & Bolinhos" but I can tell they're not really good movies, they're just guilty pleasures... That said, I was really pleased to see that Luis Ismael took a different approach to filmmaking during the making of this movie.

For starters, Bad Investigate's humor is spot on! It's not as forced or as crude as Luis Ismael's other productions and it tends to be intelligently placed for the most part. The movie is also packed with good and funny action sequences that are emphasized by the great photography and soundtrack. The plot is simple, but effective, and it has its fair share of comedy and drama. The characters are pretty well drawn and explored, leaving nothing randomly loose in the plot.

The CGI heavy scenes with explosions, which are fortunately scarce, aren't very well done but that's not enough to throw you off the movie due to its great pace: it's really good and the two hours of runtime will certainly fly by. If I have one complaint, it's the last shot in the movie. I'm not gonna spoil it for you, but the movie could definitely do without it. It is explained why it happened, but it's kind of forced and tasteless. I'll give this movie a 8/10. If you find yourself in Portugal during the premiere week, just go watch it. It's a great piece of entertainment and, in my opinion, a turning point in Portuguese cinema. It shows that Portugal can do more than soap operas and slow boring movies. But don't take my word for it, go watch it and see for yourself!