Until now, the films of Corneliu Porumboiu have been austere, rigorously linear and leavened with understated, fatalistic humor. Set in the everyday drabness of Bucharest or other, even less glamorous Romanian cities, they turn the grievances, frustrations and hopes of ordinary people into deadpan philosophical case studies. “12:08 East of Bucharest” is an inquiry into the subjective nature of historical experience. “Police, Adjective” is a seminar on law, ethics and the meaning of words. “The Treasure” is both a fable of futility worthy of Samuel Beckett and an allegory of Romania’s precarious place at the margins of the European Union.

I haven’t mentioned “Evening Falls on Bucharest” or the documentary “Infinite Football,” but you get the idea. Except that “The Whistlers,” Porumboiu’s newest film, is nothing like what I’ve just described. The chronology is splintered, the colors are bright, the plot intricate. There are picturesque non-Romanian settings and music on the soundtrack, starting with Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.” All of it in the service of a thriller involving a hard-boiled cop, a femme fatale and an international crew of gangsters.

Still, “The Whistlers” is unmistakably a Porumboiu movie, and not only because it seems to be a literal (if also somewhat cryptic) sequel to “Police, Adjective.” Vlad Ivanov, who played the pompous provincial police captain in that film, returns in this one playing the same guy, Cristi Anghelache. Still in law enforcement and still kind of a jerk, he is now working in Bucharest. He alludes to his earlier experiences during a conversation with his own boss, a prosecutor named Magda (Rodica Lazar).