Justice, or Napad, is a new Polish crime thriller film on Netflix that takes us back to the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Communist regime in Poland. The film’s plot is centered around a senior discharged police officer named Tadeusz Gadacz, who is brought back to the service to solve a special case in which three bank tellers have been murdered, and a hefty amount of money has been stolen by a group of robbers. Justice makes for a thoroughly entertaining watch, mostly because of its characters, and although the plot might not be too appealing, the changing times and conventions in the country that forms its background are very interesting.
Spoiler Alert
What is the Netflix film about?
Justice begins with a brief but intense scene from inside a bank, where three women are held hostage by some gunned robbers, and one of them is eventually shot and killed as well. The film then takes us away to somewhere in the Polish countryside, where a woman is driven to in a government car. The woman happens to be a state-appointed prosecutor, and she is part of the official team that is investigating the violent robbery at the SGB bank that shook the country only a few hours earlier. She is currently in search of the residence of a man named Tadeusz Gadacz, and when she finally finds it, the real reason for her journey from the city is explained. Gadacz was quite a famous and effective police officer, even notorious for his way of conducting investigations, up until the fall of the Communist regime in Poland. Like many other men and women who were part of the Communist government in some way, Gadacz had also been fired from his job, particularly because he was quite closely associated with the officials of the time.
Although the country had recently gone through a complete political makeover, the police and the authorities are revealed to be currently stumped by the bank robbery case. While the stealing of money from the bank could have still been taken a bit lightly, the fact that robbers had murdered the three tellers in cold blood ensured that the government left no stone unturned in trying to find the perpetrators. Besides, as an integral part of the changing economy of Poland, the particular bank has also been in the process of merging with a private company, essentially ushering in a period of privatization and a free economy. However, the recent robbery and all the media attention that it has garnered are massive disruptions to and distractions from the privatization process, as stated by the prosecutor herself.
Therefore, the new Polish government is in a hurry to solve the case and move on with its nationwide transformation, and they are ready to bring in the old gun, Tadeusz Gadacz, to help them with the matter. The prosecutor directly offers Gadacz a deal on behalf of the government—if he helps them track down the perpetrators and catch them, then the new state will forgive his proximity with the Communist regime and let him return to service as a deputy inspector. Always passionate about catching criminals and struggling to fit into a life without police work, Gadacz accepts the deal and prepares to find the robbers within two weeks’ time.
Who is the prime suspect in the robbery case?
On the first day of the investigation, Tadeusz Gadacz visits the branch of the SGB bank where the crime had taken place and is teamed up with a woman named Aleksandra Janicka. He is also given a spot in the local police station and access to police files and other items, and Gadacz gladly assumes the role of a police officer, albeit for a temporary period as of now. The first theory that is suggested by many of the subordinate police officers and some of the bank employees as well is that the security guard himself had committed the crime and fled. The Guard has been missing ever since the robbery took place, and so everyone is quick to assume his guilt. Gadacz finds the theory very odd though, considering the fact that Guard had worked at the bank for a very long time, and committing such a crime only a year before he was supposed to retire does not seem logical. Furthermore, his car is also still inside the parking lot of the bank, and the vehicle was clearly a prized possession for him since it is an expensive one.
Therefore, Gadacz refutes the theory and takes a look at the Guard’s car instead, only to find blood stains towards the front of it. Soon enough, he is able to find the dead body of the security guard, which had been stowed away inside the vents in the parking lot, and the apparent suspect was actually the fourth victim of the real perpetrators. Gadacz and Janicka started to investigate the matter further and found out that the bank’s alarms had been turned off by the branch manager, which in itself was a very suspicious thing to do. But the manager revealed that the alarm had been malfunctioning for some time now, so he switched it off to avoid hassle. The man had to apparently rush to the bank a couple of times in the recent past only to turn off the alarm in the middle of the night, so he decided to switch it off completely for the weekend. Although he had reported the matter to his superiors, no action had been taken yet.
Eventually, a new lead is found through the personnel records at the bank, for it is revealed that the security guard who had been killed was not even supposed to be on duty on the day of the robbery. He had switched shifts with the other Guard, a man named Kacper Surmiak, and incidentally, Kacper was also the Guard on duty when the branch manager had switched off the alarm. Gadacz immediately suspects that Kacper might know the perpetrators, and he goes to have a word with the young man. Kacper admits having switched shifts, but he states that he had to go off to a swearing-in ceremony of his friend, for which he needed to take a leave. Apparently, one of his close friends had been accepted into military service, for which he and two other friends, Bartek and Marek, had driven to the military camp to have one last celebration with him. The detectives soon interrogate Bartek, the owner of a video cassette store, and Marek, who lives in the countryside and belongs to a family of hunters. While all these three friends had indeed trained to be security guards together, Gadacz finds something very odd about their claims—they all mention a very particular time at which they had apparently left Warsaw, which would have been a bit difficult to remember so well otherwise.
How is Gadacz a misfit in these new times?
As the plot progresses, it is eventually confirmed that Kacper and his friends are the perpetrators, but the manner in which the investigation is carried out makes the film interesting to watch. In certain moments, Justice feels like a story about the ex-police officer Tadeusz Gadacz, who is clearly a misfit in this changed Poland. The way in which the Communist regime fell in Poland and the drastic steps taken by the new government to forget and mend the ways of the past must have caught many people like Gadacz off-guard, and the film seems to be telling a convincing tale of such individuals, who had to quickly adjust to the new conventions. A crucial part of Gadacz’s investigation is to instill fear and tension in the minds of the potential suspects, and he does not care about the impact it would have on their mental or physical health. When he first interrogates Kacper in the police station, he has a subordinate officer feed meat to the piranhas in the fish tank at that exact moment, almost indirectly reminding Kacper who is in control. Similarly, when he visits Marek’s farmhouse and learns that the man has a number of guns in his possession, owing to his family’s hunting roots, the detective seizes the guns. He admits to Janicka that he does not wish to frame Marek for hunting, which is now technically illegal, and also does not believe that the robbery was committed with these guns, but has seized them simply to keep Marek in check.
Gadacz is an out-and-out old-school police detective, and so many of his ways are quite strange and even questionable to Janicka. When the authorities make all the employees of SGB Bank see a therapist to help ease the shock and stress of having either witnessed a bank robbery or being a part of the associated investigation, Gadacz decides to make use of this chance as well. He knows that Kacper will also have to attend this therapy session and might reveal something crucial about himself, so Gadacz wastes no time to interrogate the therapist herself. As the doctor reminds him of the professional confidentiality she must maintain with regards to her patient, Gadacz does not pay any heed to it, and Janicka has to step in. Janicka objects to her elderly partner’s demands, stating that the doctor does not have to reveal anything to him, although she cannot help the situation, and eventually also realizes how Gadacz’s old-school techniques of investigation are what make him effective in the profession.
That Tadeusz Gadacz was a close associate of the Communist regime and had a lot of influence at the time also became important in the investigation. Unlike most others around, the man is not afraid or hesitant to talk about the past, which makes him unique in some senses as well. The very minister who appointed Gadacz to investigate the case had once been interrogated very brutally by the detective, possibly as the minister was part of some anti-communist movement, and yet the two are still on talking terms. When Gadacz interrogates the therapist, he almost blackmails her with the information that she had secretly acted against a superior a number of times during the Communist regime, which stopped the latter from getting a passport and fleeing Poland. In another instance later on, when Kacper appoints the help of a notorious goon to kill Gadacz, the goon ends up helping Gadacz, since he was once very close to the detective during the time of the previous government.
During one of the later interrogations, when Kacper is picked up, but there is not enough proof to pin him for the crime, the detective even pulls out his gun and threatens to shoot him. It is almost as if Tadeusz Gadacz uses information from the past to carve his way through the investigation without really taking sides with the Communist Party or the present government. But his techniques are most definitely unusual and even dated, although they turn out to be very effective by the end.
What was the real reason behind the robbery and the murders?
Kacper Surmiak is perhaps a kind of character who resembles the population of Poland whose lives did not get better in any way after the fall of the regime. The trajectory of his life always remained sad and unfortunate, irrespective of the government that came to power, although the sudden but extreme importance of money in the new era did lead him to commit the crime. Kacper did not really get to experience the love and affection of his parents, owing to the fact that his father had died many years ago and his mother passed away five years ago. All his affection was towards the only family member he had, his younger sister Ewa, with whom he had recently gotten separated. Both the siblings had grown up in adoption centers and care homes, and while Kacper eventually left and got in trouble with the law, Ewa continued to stay in the care home. Kacper wanted to take his sister home and keep her with him, but the authorities turned down his requests, stating that he did not have enough money to give her a good life.
Only a month before the robbery, Ewa had finally been adopted by a family, and Kacper was livid at the care home for allowing this, as he wanted to take her home with him. As he was reminded, once again, about his lack of wealth, he planned the bank robbery with his two best friends. Bartek and Marek agreed, especially since the former needed money to pay back loans he had taken for the video store as well. Kacper chose the date and time for the robbery, knowing that the alarm would be off and also with the information that around 1.5 million zloty would be in the safe. According to the plan, they broke into the bank and the safe when the place was empty but could not find the stash of money that they had intended to take. This was because the 1.5 million zloty had already been taken away by the lottery company, which had deposited the amount, as they had some change in plans. As a result, Kacper, Bartek, and Marek had to spend way more time in the safe than intended, as they picked up whatever amount of money they could find, and this led to the three bank tellers coming down to the safe.
The men initially wanted to just threaten the tellers and leave, but when Bartek mistakenly took the name of Kacper and one of the women identified him, there was no option left for him but to kill them. Incidentally, the three then did visit their friend in the army, and they had made the plan to ensure that they had this alibi. They had visited the army unit the previous night as well, during which Kacper stole the gun assigned to his friend and then used this weapon to commit the murders. Once they returned to the unit after the robbery, Kacper threw the gun away and also burned down all the security camera tapes in a bonfire.
Did Gadacz and Janicka arrest the perpetrator?
During Justice’s ending, Kacper realizes that his time is up and changes his plan accordingly in order to protect himself. By now, Gadacz had used his technique of emotional manipulation to convince Bartek to confess to the robbery, but Kacper finds Bartek first and kills his friend. He then goes on to kill Marek in self-defense before handing himself over to the police and claiming that Marek was the one who had roped him into the plan. As the police have to let him go because of a lack of enough proof, Kacper becomes a fugitive, and it is Gadacz who eventually finds him at the house of the family that had recently adopted Ewa. Despite his violent nature, Kacper does not intend any harm to come upon his young sister, who has also found a new and promising life now. But in Justice’s ending, Kacper steps out of the house and pretends to be carrying a gun, which leads to the police unit shooting him dead. Although Gadacz is unable to arrest Kacper and bring him to justice, he remains determined to work as a police officer. The experience also pushes him to keep aside personal egos and call up his granddaughter, since his biggest wish was to speak to the little girl, whom he had never met, as he has been estranged from his family since his divorce.
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