Ripoux series

  • Ripoux 3 (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (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.

  • Ripoux contre ripoux (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) I was very dubious that Ripoux contre ripoux would be interesting, considering the unlikely success of the first film in the series, Les Ripoux, in making audiences sympathize with a pair of crooked cops shaking out their neighbourhood for cash and favours. How can you make a fun sequel to that? (Aside from the obvious problem of the previous film’s conclusion—which this one cheerfully ignores.)  Well, the solution, as the opening act of the sequel, is to have them fall from grace (after an act of honesty, ironically enough) and be replaced by even worse crooked cops that set out to squeeze the neighbourhood for all it’s worth. That leads the oppressed neighbourhood shop owners to head to the rural retreat of our horse-raising protagonists to beg them to come back and get rid of their replacements. No, it’s not quite as neat or original as the first film, but Ripoux contre Ripoux still manages to extend the dubious charm of the previous film—Thierry Lhermitte and especially Philippe Noiret are in fine form as the crooked cops asked to prevent an even greater evil from taking over, even when their allies prove fickle and their allegiances uncertain. The sense of neighbourhood is muddled somewhat by the protagonists’ temporary exile, but the film does roar back to a better tempo during its last half as the action returns to Paris. It’s more of the same, but pleasantly so—while I still have substantial moral qualms about making heroes out of crooked cops, there’s still some charm to the series and its lead actors.