“Correct him! You have my blessing (...) My methods work.” Superintendent Billong, the protagonist of Thomas Ngijol's Untamable, discovered in the 78th Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, has very strict principles. So his eldest son is hardly surprised when his father urges the embarrassed headmaster of his secondary school to “live up to their shared educational responsibilities”, following a playground altercation (“who taught you to talk like that?”). It has to be said that the very experienced policeman is used to going much further in the exercise of his duties (“if I decide to kill you, there's nothing anyone can do to me”), in the Cameroonian city of Yaoundé where nothing is easy, between general power cuts, huge traffic jams, potholed roads, disorganised hospitals, and crimes and misdemeanours of all kinds against a backdrop of the quest for money and survival at every level.

Freely adapted from the documentary A Muder in Abidjan (1999) by Mosco Boucault, the film (starring the director) progresses on two fronts. On the one hand, Billong, still impeccable in his suit and tie, investigates the murder of a colleague, a seemingly classic investigation (morgue, crime scene, informant's confidences, arrests, interrogations) that above all reveals the totally arbitrary nature of the local police force (intimidation, quasi-torture, random raids, corruption, etc.). On the other hand, in the Commissioner's private life, nothing is clear either, as his heavily sanctimonious parental authority (in the name of traditions and a dangerous world to prepare for) is openly questioned by his eldest daughter, following the eldest of her four brothers, while the mother of the family thinks no less of him ("Do you think I'm tough just for fun? - Before protecting them, think of loving them first"). In his quest for the truth and under pressure from those closest to him, his superiors, the prevailing chaos and his own conscience, the sententious Billong, beset by a host of dilemmas, feels his personality cracking...

Striking a balance between sufficiently credible realism (fuelled by some very effective night-time sequences across Yaoundé) and a police comedy that hijacks the genre's codes by tinging them with irony ("I believe 50% of your story and I don't believe 50% of it"), Untamable is full of amusing little details (notably the names of the robbers: Putin, Django, Vin Diesel, etc.) and earthy dialogue (including a Homeric marital dispute). Even if the script remains rather elementary, the film's elegant dimension, both fabricated and sincere, gradually infuses itself with charm, (to the sound of Marvin Gaye and music composed by Dany Synthé & Isko) in the tradition (all things considered) of Blaxploitation cinema à la John Shaft revisited today, Cameroon-style.

Untamable was produced by Why Not Productions and Chronic. Goodfellas handles international sales.