Random Patrol

Law and order are Matt’s duties. Every morning, this US police officer in the suburb of Oklahoma City takes his car to patrol in town. Every morning, he worries about the arrests of the day. Every morning, he wonders how much this job has changed him.

Behind Matt, who is driving, the grey leafy suburb of Oklahoma City slides by, unchanging, through the car window. All the houses look alike, but this may be because we see them through the eyes of Matt, who is a police officer and who supposes that behind each door, on each street corner, his death surely awaits him. He is already thinking about it when we see him at dawn amid birdsong getting into his steamed-up SUV to begin his day of patrol. Seated in the passenger seat for half an hour, Random Patrol draws the portrait of an institution, a social class and a man. None of the three, so it seems, is in good shape. Matt is an ordinary police office, a law enforcement worker. Patrolling is his lot; he finds time to pick up his daughter from school, but can’t imagine missing a day’s work. That would imply he is failing in his mission, which clearly involves waiting for his death, as you can’t embody law and order without having a deep belief in evil, and even frankly pursuing it. Such is the portrait of the institution, and of an anonymous America. The portrait of the man shows the same thing: blockaded behind his police officer’s tinted glasses, behind his badge and revolver, which is buried with him in the melancholic vigil tracing the contours of his bleak life. Divorced, sad. Patrolling sometimes also means wading in at the deep end. In the film’s closing shots, the wheels of the SUV are half-drowned, as the Canadian River has burst its banks.

Jérôme Momcilovic