Ripoux 3 (2003)

(On Cable TV, January 2022) If you thought that resurrecting long-dormant franchises was purely a Hollywood problem, then I’ve got bad news for you: it’s a worldwide issue, as Paris-set Ripoux 3 illustrates. Picking up twelve years after Ripoux contre RIpoux, this third instalment does acknowledge the passing of time in the series’ very loose chronology: Our younger crooked cop has become a senior officer and hasn’t seen his mentor in corruption for a decade. That mentor has fallen on hard times—living on a boat and still gambling beyond his means. When a score goes wrong, the two meet again briefly, then spend the rest of the film pushed and pulled by a fake death, younger protégés, enmity from the mob, a growing police investigation and one last score. At least both Philippe Noiret and Thierry Lhermitte are in fine form here, easily slipping into familiar characters. Less heavy on police corruption but more insistent on traditional comic devices, Ripoux 3 only makes a middling argument in favour of its existence. It comes as a relief that it doesn’t try to repeat the same things as its predecessors, but it’s not clear why that story deserved to be told. In keeping with that thought, writer-director Claude Zidi’s film itself is watchable but not overly impressive—a comedy that ends up as a heist film, with both characters passing the torch to the younger generation. Hardly essential, but not the worst scenario if you were looking for one more quick lap around the track with those two lead characters.