Of all the genres Hollywood has visited and revisited over the years, perhaps it's the police drama that can boast the greatest heritage. For decades, the American film scene has consistently delivered classics – Touch of Evil, Serpico and The Untouchables – and characters with the magnetism of Harry Callahan, Jake Gittes and "Popeye" Doyle. In recent years, though, Hollywood has let us down with its cop films. The same system that not long ago gave us Heat and LA Confidential has turned to wheeling out substandard fare such as Street Kings, Brooklyn's Finest and We Own the Night – films that have turned the police procedural into a drowsy rendition of worn conventions as opposed to the weighty, character-driven dramas that mark the genre's finest hours.
Many of Hollywood's cops and criminals are distinctly lacking in substance – yet screenwriters needn't look too far for inspiration. Swiss-born director Baran Bo Odar's The Silence provides a masterful reminder of the delights that a generous helping of gloom and menace can bring. While far from perfect, The Silence revitalises the genre with some welcome atmosphere and thematic probing. It bears all the relevant conventions – a brutal crime, the implication of various shifty suspects, a team of obsessively driven cops – but minimises the red herrings and narrative trickery in favour of the slow burn, patiently delving into the lives and minds of its characters. It's as much a study of family trauma and social rejection as it is a police thriller. This Germany-set mystery is well positioned to give its American cousins a lesson in how to restore style and vigour to a time-honoured but often weary genre.
Like many fine crime mysteries – think Clint Eastwood's Mystic River – the film's tone never veers too far from quietly ominous, and yet when there is an air of anxious urgency it's kept at a far higher intensity than in the more run-of-the-mill fare – say The Bone Collector or Red Dragon. It's a visual treat, too – the film's framing of southern Germany's cornfields, lakes and winding country roads demonstrates that an explosion isn't the only form of spectacle, and its setting provides as much stylistic input into the film as, say, Michael Mann's dark and shimmering vision of LA in Heat. Odar also hones the "less is more" approach and demonstrates how subtlety has become a lost art among Hollywood thrillers that too often show rather than suggest. When The Silence reaches its conclusion, there is no grand explanatory monologue from the killer, no overblown chase sequence. Instead, a lingering shot of something mundane – a front door being closed, a car pulling into a garage – is suddenly loaded with implication. It's a film confident enough to let its watchers make their own connections.
There are exceptions: American films that don't share the shortcomings of a lot of Hollywood's recent crime thrillers. Mystic River is a modern masterpiece, and David Fincher's Zodiac was an expertly crafted thriller that blended substance, style and story. Ben Affleck, too, has proved himself surprisingly adept behind the lens. Both Gone Baby Gone and The Town created far darker, brooding and more intriguing portraits of inner-city Boston than Martin Scorsese's overly glamorised The Departed.
Elsewhere in American media, the genre is thriving. The past decade's much-hailed television productions (primarily The Wire and The Shield) have proved not only that America can do complex, weighty police dramas, but that they can be the genre's standard bearers.
Too often, Hollywood cop films sell their audiences short, rarely showing a level of ambition that ventures beyond the conventional delivery of plot, dialogue and spectacle. They only need to look to Germany's latest offering – or indeed turn on their televisions – for some pointers as to what they should be aiming for.
