Les Ripoux (1984) - film review

After 20 years of policing a crime-riddled district of Paris, Inspecteur René has learnt that it is far better to co-operate with petty crooks than to hassle them.  And, in return for turning a blind-eye, he receives a welcome supplement to his salary.  René’s nice system is suddenly disrupted when he is partnered with a rookie cop, François, who is determined to rigidly apply the law at every opportunity.  With the help of an ageing prostitute, René sets out to corrupt François.   His scheme backfires with unexpected consequences...

This comedy thriller, a no-holds barred satire on police corruption, was a major success for director Claude Zidi.   The film won no less than three Césars in 1985 (for best film, best director and best editing) and it remains one of his best films, occupying a totally different league to his higher profile but comparatively trivial comic efforts such as Astérix et Obélix contre Cesar.

Philippe Noiret is the perfect choice for the part of the laid back cop who is so corrupt that he scarcely notices how corrupt he has become (casually receiving back-handers and letting suspected criminals off the hook almost as if he was morally obliged to).  It is the kind of role which Noiret plays best and in which, sadly, the actor has become irreversibly typecast.  Alongside this master of black comedy, Thierry Lhermitte appears rather bland, although he works rather well as the unlikeable stooge to Noiret’s amiable "ripou" (which is French back-slang for "rotten one").

What makes this a particularly entertaining film is the way in which it satirises not just the French police system (which everyone knows was rife with corruption at the time) but also the French crime-thriller genre. The icon of the policier genre in the early to mid 1980s was Jean-Paul Belmondo, who invariably ended up playing a police inspector who used unorthodox (sometimes criminal) methods to achieve results.  Les Ripoux goes one step further and makes the police into loveable villains who behave in the same complacent way as Belmondo (with Lhermitte even wearing an exact copy of Belmondo’s outfit from Le Marginal of 1983).

Even to those who are not familiar with the genre, there is a great deal to like in this film.  In additional to the conventional thriller ending (which naturally involves a high-speed car chase and shoot out in the neon-lit streets of Paris), the comedy is well constructed – and very tongue in cheek – managing to avoid the cheap farce of some of Zidi’s lesser films.

© James Travers 2001

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