Ripoux Contre Ripoux

Veteran Montmartre cop Rene (Philippe Noiret), and his young partner Francois (Thierry Lhermitte) pad their meager salaries with petty shakedowns of the local crooks and corrupt businessmen. When Francois suddenly announces that he wants to go straight, Rene arrests a man at random to prove that everyone is guilty of something. The man they arrest is a bank manager named Blanchard (Jean-Claude Brialy), who immediately breaks down and admits to embezzlement, but Rene lets him go. After the two cops catch a thief and recover the money he has stolen, Francois returns it to the store owner, but she presses charges against them--denying the money was returned--because it turns out that she was Rene's lover 25 years before, and he had unceremoniously dumped her. Rene and Francois are suspended from the force for corruption, and they go to the country to stay at a horse farm.

Their new replacements--Brisson (Guy Marchand) and Portal (Jean-Pierre Castaldi)--seem like by-the-book straight-arrows, but are, in fact, far more corrupt and greedy than their predecessors. After they muscle in on all of the local businesses, the store owners go to visit Rene and Francois and plead with them to come back, offering them a salary to nab the new cops. They agree, but are arrested by Brisson and Portal when they arrive in Paris. They let Rene go, but offer to get Francois back on the force and split their take with him if he agrees to leave them alone. Francois joins them, working undercover to gather evidence against them, but they eventually find out, and plant drugs in Francois's car. After getting arrested, and escaping, Rene and Francois follow Brisson and see that he deposits his money in the bank which is managed by the corrupt Blanchard, whom they had arrested earlier. They blackmail Blanchard into helping them stage a fake bank heist, and steal all of Brisson's money from his safe-deposit box. They then have someone tip off Brisson and Portal about the robbery, and when they arrive at the bank, Rene and Francois lock them up in the vault, making it appear as though they're the bank robbers. The two are arrested and Rene and Francois receive a promotion--to the anti-corruption squad.

The fun of MY NEW PARTNER is its breezy, laissez-faire attitude towards corruption and the perfect odd-couple comic chemistry between Philippe Noiret's cynical, slovenly Rene and Thierry Lhermitte's idealistic, handsome Francois. The sequel, while more mechanical and lacking the freshness of the original, effectively delivers more of the same, as long as one is not overly sensitive about such things as a humorous depiction of police brutality and gay stereotyping. The superb Noiret is such a pleasure to watch that he can make his character--who lives with a hooker and stops police chases so he can bet on horse races--wholly likable. The dashing Lhermitte is very good as a straight man and the well-chosen supporting cast is also excellent, while Francis Lai's snappy score and the vivid location photography of Montmartre and the French countryside all contribute to turning a commercial trifle such as this into a fairly entertaining film.

The intricately plotted script contains a number of funny sequences, such as when Rene drugs a horse, causing it to not only win its own race, but also a second one running on an adjacent track. The bank-heist finale is also cleverly conceived and expertly executed, bringing the film to a satisfying conclusion as the odious Brisson and Portal get their well-deserved comeuppance. The film's lighthearted, European approach towards some sensitive issues may be politically incorrect in America, but the film's disarming message seems to be that everyone is dishonest to some extent, and that corrupt cops are fine as long as they're charming and good-natured like Rene and Francois, as opposed to the venal and abusive Brisson and Portal. (Profanity, sexual situations.) leave a comment