COLORS OF EVIL: RED

When the mutilated body of a young girl is found on a Polish beach, and is discovered to have striking similarities to a solved murder from 15 years prior, tenacious detective Leopold Bilski (Jakub Gierszał).

With the help of the victims mother Helena (Maja Ostaszewska), and against the wishes of is superiors, Leopold pushes forward with his investigation, even after their apparent culprit has taken his own life.

Colors of Evil: Red is not, it is important to say, an easy watch. Some of the visuals, particularly of the deceased are shockingly brutal, and it tackles difficult subject matter including rape, domestic abuse and murder.

It is one where, for audiences sensitive to any of these topics, I would forgive them for not wanting to give this the time of day.

It is, however, for audiences that are able to stick with it, a really satisfying police procedural. A genre which does not get the love that it used to within Hollywood.

It is told in a non-linear structure, with half of the film taking place in the present day, following Leopold and Helena’s investigation, but half of it taking place in the recent past, following our victim Monika (Sofia Jastrzębska) in the weeks leading up to her death.

This non-linear structure allows the film to drip feed information to the audience without relying on the clunky exposition these films all too often have. It also allows us to get to know the victim much more intimately than if she was just a body in the morgue; Manipulating you into rooting for her, even though you know where her story ends.

Sofia Jastrzębska is brilliant as Monika. She is given an awful lot to do - which in the interest of avoiding spoilers I won’t go into - but she is effortlessly believable throughout. 

The stand out in the cast though is Przemysław Bluszcz as club owner and gangster Kazar. There is a surface calm and charm to him but this is barely concealing the real threat and sneeze that lies within. He is, on the face of it, mild and thoughtful, but Bluszcz’s performance leaves you in no doubt that there is potential for an explosion of rage at any time.

And it is a performance that made me think that perhaps Colors of Evil: Red may have worked better as a limited series rather than a feature film. I found myself wanting to spend more time with him, learning about his life and his criminal empire. 

The film itself is slow and brooding in all the best ways, but the extra time a series would give, would allow some of the characters to grow, and in Kazars case allow him to become and even more threatening and fearsome figure.

And speaking of the film being slow and brooding, its score is excellent at portraying this. From what I can see the music in the film has seemingly gone uncredited, but from the very first minute it leaves you in no doubt as to the tone of the film. It is never intrusive, casually doing its work in the background, but it assists the film in setting the atmosphere, and ratcheting up the tension as the story progresses.

There are, however, a couple of song choices that play in the film that are at odds with this. Very occasionally a non-diegetic pop song will start playing which seems completely out of place with the tone that everything else in the film is working so hard to set. I’m unsure why it was decided to include them, but it just seemed like an odd choice.

Ultimately, this is a really well constructed mystery that allows the tension to build and build as it heads towards a satisfyingly twisty conclusion.

Maybe it would have worked better as a Netflix limited series, and some of the song choices are at odds with a brilliant, brooding, score, but all in all this is an excellent police procedural.