Film

A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards

Name: A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards
Genre: Action, Drama, Crime
Released: 2012
Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Filippo Nigro, Marco Giallini, Andrea Sartoretti, Domenico Diele

Police procedural

A.C.A.B. follows four Rome police officers—three hardened vets and a fresh recruit—through the brutal streets and darker corners of a riot control unit. It's a raw, violent portrait of institutional corruption and moral compromise, where the line between enforcing order and perpetuating brutality blurs past recognition. Not a procedural; more a character study that doesn't flinch.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a raw, ensemble study of a riot squad's brotherhood, its bond and its violence, told without a comfortable hero to root for.

Skip it if you need light relief or a tidy moral arc; it is loud, bleak and often ugly, with a long grind of scenes that repeat the same anger.

What it asks of you: Stay with it through long stretches of tension and shouting, and accept that it wants you uneasy rather than entertained, running a little under two hours.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Departed2006

Two moles, one police department, moral ambiguity crushing everyone equally. Like A.C.A.B., it uses genre momentum to ask how good people become compromised by the systems they serve.

But The Boston accents are distracting and the ending feels slightly neat compared to the messiness you've signed up for.

In the Fade2017

German thriller about a widow pursuing her family's killers through a justice system that bends and fails her. Same moral exhaustion, same precise attention to how institutions protect themselves over people.

But It's slower and colder than A.C.A.B., less propulsive. Some will find it remote.

Gomorrah2008

Naples gangland told through multiple lives tangled in the same violence. Like A.C.A.B., it refuses a single moral viewpoint and treats systemic corruption as a fact of the landscape, not a plot twist.

But The narrative threads are deliberately frayed; if you need a tidy throughline you'll bounce off it.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A.C.A.B. - All Cops Are Bastards

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Death of Louis XIV2016

Both examine the slow degradation of authority and identity when the machinery that defines you stops working.

Albert Serra's film of a king's final days—no plot, just slow disintegration, the body failing, power evaporating into nothing. The connection: A.C.A.B. watches institutions rot from within; Serra watches a man become irrelevant while still in the room.

But It is glacially slow, visually austere, and deliberately boring. If you want narrative propulsion you will feel trapped.

Training Day2001

A veteran cop corrupts a rookie in a single day. It's the idealism-to-disillusionment arc that A.C.A.B. explores across a whole unit, compressed into one savage education.

But It's become a classic, so the twist lands softer now. Also significantly more Hollywood in shape.

Z1969

Costa-Gavras's political thriller about state violence and cover-up in a crumbling democracy. The DNA is different but the engine—systemic brutality, complicity up the chain—is the same.

But It's a 1969 film made in the French New Wave idiom. If you're watching A.C.A.B. for visceral street-level action, this is slower and more stylised.

Serpico1973

A cop fighting corruption from within his own unit, becoming an outsider for telling the truth. It's the ethical inverse of A.C.A.B.—same machinery, different choice, same cost.

But Pacino's performance is magnificent but the film softens its own edges. It believes in redemption more than A.C.A.B. does.

The Drop2014

Tom Hardy as a quiet bartender pulled into Brooklyn's criminal machinery. Shares A.C.A.B.'s interest in how ordinary men end up compromised by forces bigger than moral choice.

But It's understated where A.C.A.B. is visceral. The pace is patient to the point of meandering for some.

Cop Land1997

Stallone as a deaf New Jersey cop who discovers his entire department is corrupt. Dense, character-driven, genuinely interested in how good intentions calcify into bad outcomes.

But It's a 1990s prestige picture with a bloated runtime and an ensemble cast that sometimes eclipses the plot. The pacing sags.

Sleuth2007

A tense two-hander about deception, performance, and the masks people wear. Like A.C.A.B., it treats masculinity and violence as theatre that corrupts everyone it touches.

But It's almost entirely talk, and the twist fundamentally recasts what you've watched. Not everyone wants that kind of rug-pull.

Burning2018

Like A.C.A.B., it treats violence as something structural rather than individual—a consequence of hierarchy and the need to assert dominance within it.

Lee Chang-dong's film about a working-class writer, a woman between them, and a rich man who may or may not be a murderer. Austere, withholding, interested in how class and male ego create violence that hides beneath civility.

But It's nearly three hours, deliberately opaque, and refuses to explain itself. The ending doesn't resolve—it hangs. Patience and tolerance for ambiguity required.