My New Partner

That's it: no more DVD or web movies to watch, thus i become addict to what French TV can play: for this night before my trip to Malmo, a channel offers this french comedy that brings back for me good memories.

First, "Les Ripoux" was maybe the first video game I bought to play then on our TO9+ computer. So it was maybe in 1987. The game was incredible funny to play as the goal was similar to the movie: amass as much money as you can as a bad cop! To do that, you used a sort of Google map limited the Paris district called the golden triangle. There, you met crooks that you had to make talk by choosing lines of dialogs. Maybe the graphics were static but the game-play was really stunning!

Next, it's Paris in the eighties and this city in that period is really like a magnet to me since my childhood. But, beware the Paris depicted here isn't the city of lights but rather of darkness as this triangle is a highly deprived area with dense immigrated poor population. As you can see in the movie, it's looks old and derelict and now, in 2013, as urban renovation is inexistent in Paris to give way to gentrification, it's even worst!

As for the story, i think it's a accurate piece of French culture: We are really down to earth people, happy with a good meal, not really motivated at work, very lenient with rules, at least for the ones that are civil servants like me or those policemen. So France is really this mix between old USSR and a banana republic. The originality of this movie is to expose this truth in a comedy and i admit it's funny: Lhermitte is a good choice to play the naive, by the book blue cop as much as Noiret is perfect to play the voluble, sympathetic veteran.

While watching it, i was thinking to the American buddy cop movie and how this subject of corrupt cops is a bit leftover to prefer big guns, big fights... here, our two bad apples are really rotten to the core and we finally like them: a paradox !