Direction: Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Country: Kazhakstan / France
Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s A Dark, Dark Man is a well-shot, slow-burning noir cop drama whose crime story - filled with overwhelming schemes and visceral truth about corruption, crime, and incompetence in the police - contrasts with a somewhat airy narration. While the picture doesn't quite maintain a vigorous energy through to the very end, it is still a knotty and quietly terrifying portrait of a lawless place delivered with disarming moments of humor.
The young police detective Bekzat Alibekov (Daniar Alshinov) sorely lacks principles while performing his duties in the desolate rural Karatas village in Kazakhstan. All police officers in this arid small town do. However, he got a reputation for being violent and unscrupulous during the couple years in service.
He’s in charge of a case in which four orphan boys were found raped and dead. What should be just another quick-resolving case where the police itself tries to incriminate the wrong man - a mentally unstable local called Pukuar (Teoman Khos) - to cover up the big shark behind the crimes, suddenly changes the odds because of Bekzat’s own past as well as the forced presence of a foreign journalist, Ariana Saparova (Dinara Baktybaeva). She puts him under pressure, ready to report any irregularity in his actions.
Having descended into hell too many times, can someone totally shrouded in darkness for so long allow some light in his life? In the end, Yerzhanov, who co-wrote the script in partnership with Roelof Jan Minneboo (the writer of George Ovashvili’s Corn Island and Khibula in his third collaboration with the director after The Owners and Gentle Indifference of the World), manages to make us feel some sympathy for the devil.
