Socorro! Chamem o Ladrão

I even think it's just as good as the film it follows. Sure it uses the codes of the film noir genre much less, but the story about a pair of corrupt cops getting initially played out by an even more corrupt pair is enthralling, served with its dose of argot vocabulary traditional for films taking place in the popular arrondissements of Paris. The chemistry between René (Philippe Noiret) and François (Thierry Lhermitte) is still top notch, their counterparts played by Guy Marchand and Jean-Pierre Castaldi are also excellent even if they have much less screen time. It might be a pity Régine didn't play René's woman anymore, just as Julien Guiomar not playing the police chief, but their replacements Line Renaud and Michel Aumont do a more than satisfying job. Especially the latter is marvellously depicting the somehow pitifully naive and ignorant superior to the corrupt policemen who work for him.

By the way "ripoux" doesn't exactly mean garbage as some think. It's verlan (language where the syllables are inverted) for "pourris" which means rotten.

I saw this film while studying in Paris for the year back in college. It's part of a series which apparently was very popular in France. I like the way the French do buddy cop movies. In this one, you really see the cops as humans with real flaws and problems, but their chemistry is undeniable. While the French could learn how to make action films from the US, we here in America can certainly learn from the French not to fear being human . One last note, the title is in pig latin - Ripoux is the inverted word for garbage.