Rent The Cop (1972)

Beyond Belief - The Cop review by NW

This film is spectacular, sharply and sparely filmed - as always with Melville - and meticulously detailed. Before watching it make sure that all your mental facilities for multiple plot line tracking are fully active and you are ready to distinguish between all the solidly built men in suits and trenchcoats! At the end of my first viewing of this tale of professionally planned robbery, treachery and death I was still quite confused about exactly how the plot worked ... Catherine Deneuve was as superb as ever, but I was still at a loss about her allegiances ... for example ... indeed, re-visiting after a few months I am still confused!

Beautifully filmed: as always, outdoes its american archetypes. The exactly detailed mechanism of the robbers' plot delightfully stretches things a bit far ... plots like that tend to hit snags in real life and Melville is being ambitious ... robbery on a train from a helicopter flying overhead - can you really believe it? The huge horseshoe magnet to unlock the train door? - but gosh, it is impressive. It may be daft, but if you are going to play the perfect robbery game, and you are Jean-Pierre Melville, go ahead: it will be a masterpiece! Similarly, Alain Delon's cold eyed perfectionism is rather beyond credibility, but why not? Remember to apply your sense of humour and the bizarre.

As always, I longed for french sub-titles – I found the really rapid dialogue hard to follow and the English sub-titles seemed often to vary quite a bit from what was actually said ...

If you like Melville and French film noir do not miss this great film. - The Cop review by CB

Melville's last film is bewildering to understand on first viewing but this is a superbly crafted film (with the exception of one flaw). Several climatic scenes are rendered virtually dialogue less ( as was true of Le Cercle Rouge) with much emotional tension conveyed by interchanges of short glances or long stares. Several incidents in the film are preposterous but the film is so engrossing I just laughed them off. The only flaw in the film is the 20 minute long train sequence where the exteriors are so obviously made using a toy train set that it grates, even though one accepts the utter implausibility of a helicopter travelling a few metres above a train for about 20 minutes without anyone on board noticing, and for me the accumulation of the detail of Simon's activities went on too long. All the main actors are superb though the characters are largely cynically dispassionate. Un Flic is as worthy as Melville's other more celebrated gangster films like Le Doulos and Le Circle Rouge.

Paris Noir. - The Cop review by Steve

Jean-Pierre Melville's final release also brings to a close a trilogy of crime films with Alain Delon, after Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970). Though this lacklustre heist story is the least of them, which is maybe betrayed by the desultory title(s). This time the star is on the right side of the law, though hardly honest. 

The cop will employ any means to bring down a ruthless criminal mob led by the ultra-rugged Richard Crenna. He has sex with the gangster's moll (Catherine Deneuve) beats up the suspects, blackmails the informers... all to suggest his emptiness; the existential sterility brought on by his round the clock exposure to felony.

This pessimism gives it some neo-noir atmosphere, though there is little visual style. Or much suspense. The familiar genre motifs don't connect. The two main action scenes are humdrum, especially compared with Hollywood crime films of the period. Many of which were influenced by Le Samouraï...

And it's disappointing that Paris, the home of chic, looks so unfashionable. The crooks are dressed for '40s film noir. The most engaging feature is Delon's numb, morally exhausted cop, cruising the city at night; which for him is just a sprawling crime scene. But this is standard in '70s police dramas. Sadly, Melville ends with a dud.