Dominik Moll

The metro sequence in Case 137 (2025) briefly quickens a film built around patient police work. Moll organises it for immediate suspense, but the slower inquiry is absorbing enough not to need regular jolts. He makes the routine of investigating misconduct worth watching in its own right. This is a good procedural, directed with a clear sense of where our attention belongs. We were gripped by the examination of evidence, which made the passages explaining its significance frustrating.

Moll's early thrillers, With a Friend Like Harry... (2000) and Lemming (2005), found psychological unease beneath comfortable middle-class lives. Both were written with Gilles Marchand, a regular collaborator through the later move towards grounded police procedurals. Only the Animals (2019) built its mystery from interlocking stories. With The Night of the 12th (2022), the daily work of investigators became central. The later films retain the earlier interest in suspense, but spend more time on how institutions work and what gets in the way of an investigation.

In Case 137, Moll and Marchand give the investigator a difficulty that cannot be settled simply by identifying the officers involved. She works for the organisation whose conduct she is examining, and that organisation has reasons to resist her work. Léa Drucker's restrained performance keeps the inquiry steady without competing with its detail. Moll is strongest when he lets that conflict emerge through the work itself, rather than stopping to tell us how serious it is.

The reservation is straightforward: Moll sometimes explains too much. In Case 137, discussions of policing repeat points the investigation has already established, and the tension slackens. A firmer cut would help the film trust the attention its investigative scenes have earned. Start there if the small advances of a patient inquiry are your sort of suspense, with some tolerance for a director who occasionally checks that everyone has understood.