With a TwistThere's a phrase in Hollywood that's probably used every time somebody's trying to sell a movie: that it's a romance/horror film/character drama "but with a twist." With
Bon Cop, Bad Cop the twist is that it's Canadian and bilingual. Otherwise, it's your standard buddy cop shoot-'em-up movie, which was released last year and apparently broke box office records all over Canada. Why did I rent it? - because it stars
Colm Feore, of course. To be more precise, it stars Colm Feore as the uptight English speaking cop from Toronto and Patrick Huard as the loose-cannon Francophone from Montreal. I watched it this past weekend and found myself really enjoying it, explosions, serial killer and all. The movie's makers were meticulous about giving equal time to both actors, both languages and both locations (in fact, the first victim is found on the Quebec/Ontario border, with half of him on each side).
The plot of
Bon Cop, Bad Cop is formulaic - I guessed a lot of what was going to happen early on. That doesn't make the film bad, just typical. The fun is in the details: the acting (both Feore and Huard are very good), the dialogue (overlapping and
fast. Learning these lines in two languages must have been quite a job), and the funny scenes that get thrown in along the way. At one point the two police officers, having found the killer's hideout and another body, then manage to blow up the house when one of the officers trips an alarm protecting the killer's marijuana crop. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, just go with it. They manage to escape the fire but wind up with a contact high from the burning plants. Watching these two giggling helplessly while they're getting chewed out by the Montreal chief of police is worth the price of the film all by itself. Another good scene involves a motormouth coroner who speaks French so fast that not even Patrick Huard can figure out what he's saying.
There are some parts I could have done without - the gratuitous sex scene where the Montreal cop gets it on with the Toronto cop's sister comes to mind - but the bonding bits are good and carry some genuine emotion to them. Both men are divorced, raising their kids as best they can, and they get to meet each other's families in the course of the case. This part doesn't feel forced to me. At any rate, if you're in the mood for an escapist buddy movie with guns, car chases, humor and subtitles you could do a lot worse than
Bon Cop, Bad Cop. And it sure is nice to see Colm Feore in a starring role for a change.
Labels: Pop Culture
posted by Dr. Alice at #
