Cops breaking the rules

Let's be cops if fantasy romp with about as much narrative integrity and close directorial editing as a blancmange, albeit a very funny (in the main) blancmange. Whereas the Keeper of Lost Causes is anything but funny but is probably a far truer reflection of grimy, frustrating, laborious policing. Both films are worth seeing, but not in the same sitting. I saw them both separated by a day. A week in between would have been better.

Many of the biggest laughs with the funny cops movie appeared in the trailer and, as it turned out, this buddy movie had its strong poignant and thriller moments. The unfunny cops movie, in Danish with subtitles, continued the now established genre of dark Scandinavian crime thriller with excellent acting from the three main characters. Although in the end, it felt like more of a TV drama than a feature film.

Oddly, although the two films are very different, what links them is a commitment to doing the right thing even when they have been told not to so. I won't expand on that, as I do not want to give too much away about either plot.

And this is also the case for exceptional leaders: they will do what they know to be right even when people around them are telling them to stop or do something different. Indeed what probably marks superlative leaders out is their courage to break the rules.

When did you last break a rule or defy an instruction?

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This is the forty sixth (and seventh) of my 2014 series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I am doing this. Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.