Les casseurs de gang

Elliott Gould and Robert Blake are a surprisingly affable team in this blood-spattered crime-flick written and directed by Peter Hyams, which stays loose and shaggy and doesn't wrap itself up too much in seriousness or pretensions (until the finale). Two Los Angeles vice cops, tired of seeing their prize busts going unrewarded by a police commissioner who is on the take from a sleazy crime czar, use their down-time to shake up the kingpin, whom they are sure is about to pull off a major drug exchange. The leads are a lot of fun, particularly Gould, and Hyams keeps the camera moving-moving-moving until you feel convinced he must have his cinematographer strapped to the back of a motorcycle. There are the usual cheap shots, titillation asides, a blatantly moronic judge, and the proverbial exasperated sergeant who keeps saying things like, "My ass will be in a sling!" Hyams is really tough on Los Angeles, and one might come away from the picture asking: if the police force were so corrupt, wouldn't that be a bigger story than the one we're getting? Still, the combination of good performances, an interesting script, a goofy undermining, and a down-and-dirty scenario makes the movie a rowdy ride with exciting sequences. **1/2 from ****

Directed by Peter Hyams, Busting apparently inspired the television show Starsky & Hutch. It was released at a similar time as Freebie and the Bean which was commercially more successful but Busting is more tighter, coherent and cynical picture that still retains elements of its comedy.

Keneely (Elliott Gould) tall, laconic and chews gum all the time and Farrel (Robert Blake) shorter and tougher are two LA vice cops who spend most of their time arresting hookers and people in gay bars rather than than the big crime lords who they feel are being protected by their superior officers and cynical lawyers.

They decide to go all out to catch the local crime lord Rizzo (Allen Garfield) which annoys their superiors who prefer they go after the small fry.

The film has a comedic and anarchic tone but beneath the cynicism it also has a heart of two cops trying to do the right thing and not happy with just fitting up hookers and their clients.

There are thrills as well with well staged shootout sequences in a market and later in a hospital. The film is a softer and sarcastic edged version of The French Connection featuring elements of a buddy cop duo and a message that crime does pay.

This was Peter Hyams directorial debut and he does show some of the elements that would later make him a very good filmmaker. Elliott Gould and Robert Blake play two vice cops who are tired of they're job until they try and bust a hooker (Cornelia Sharpe) and are told that she has connections with a local mob boss (Allen Garfield) and because of that she won't be prosecuted. So then they decide to check him and his operations out. What I think hurts the film is that its so predictable and its just another cop film from the seventies. Nothing that special. Gould and Blake use the usual cop banter when they talk and then there is the obligatory scene with Gould in his rundown cheap apartment. Every cop film has this scene. Of course the Sgt in charge of them keeps telling them both he's heard complaints about them and you have to have at least one car chase. There is one impressive scene and its where they chase three bad guys out of a building and into a supermarket. Its done in one continuous shot and its accompanied by an effective piece of music. Its a very well done scene and very well choreographed. The same music is heard during the ambulance chase scene. Football player Carl Eller has a scene where he beats up Gould and how about Blake calling Garfield "Spanky"! Hyams would later direct better films than this and while this film does have some decent moments (Like Gould on the stand!) its still not up to par with a lot of the cop films of the seventies.

Busting is a cop show encapsulated, purely episodic in structure as the two vice cop heroes team on various assorted cases, with unstable degrees of success. It's in keeping with the refreshing realism of this period in the film's genre, as it's exceedingly cynical, robustly indicating that crime does pay, and that the biggest criminals in society are dishonest politicians and businessmen who will never be penalized. Were the production not as befuddled and awkward, this rather poorly titled actioner could easily rank among the two French Connections, Bullitt and the Dirty Harry series.

Against an abrasive cityscape of backstreets and littered alleyways, Elliott Gould and Robert Blake star as vagabond vice squad detectives, the type who in actuality set the judicial system back decades. Elliott Gould, the tall one, incessantly chews bubble gum, ambles somewhat hunched and talks in the manner of someone fashioning himself on the star of an Elliott Gould movie, which is awesome. Robert Blake, an unlit cigarette inexplicably hanging from his lips, behaves like a guy who wishes he were tall and realizes he never will be. It doesn't trouble him, though it makes him a bit less compromising than most guys.

Gould and Blake inhabit their work lock, stock and barrel. They consume most of their time apprehending people who are more of a perceived threat to society than a real one: call girls, massage parlor staff and gay bar regulars. It's simply what they do to keep the wheels turning, like road cleaners. It's one of the existential quirks of Busting that when the vice boys do get mixed up in their work, when they find themselves pursuing the Mr. Big accountable for the considerable multi-million-dollar L.A. rackets in addition to the trivial ones, they get thumped, both by the crooks and by their Police Department superiors who may, it would seem, stand for the posture of the society whose protectors they are: The action sooner or later gets around to charging Allen Garfield, cast as a local peer of the realm, with practically all illegal goings-on in town. Garfield, as ever an exceptional actor, brings poise and a sense of being wholly together to the role.

As bemused as the Philip Marlowe Gould interpreted a year before in Altman's brilling Long Goodbye, this 1974 film was the first film by Hyams. His aptitude as a director is more apparent in this film than in any other he's done perhaps, especially in the visual highlights and in the performances. I have an idea that that the qualities of Gould and Blake, instead of the screenplay, are answerable for the distinctness provided the roles. They try a bit too hard for idiosyncrasy and funny habit, nonetheless they're effective at establishing particular characters.

Hyams engineered something of an achievement by crafting a rough cop film sans taking advantage of the right-wing scorn that warns us all to arm ourselves. I.e., it recognizes that when cops and robbers are firing guns at each other in open places, the lookers-on aren't impervious to the bullets. When Gould and Blake chase some heroin pushers through a supermarket in a continuous gunfight, the movie shares the panic of the bystanders to the extent that it does the tension of the pursuit. It's this plane of alertness that secedes this possibly pioneering buddy cop picture from the subsequent second-hand goods in marketeering mockery of the genre that was given that healthy dose of gritty reality in the 1970s, not only by transcendent pictures like The French Connection and classics like Dirty Harry, but even bargains like Busting.

Peter Hyams' debut movie is a forgotten movie jewel from 1973. It's a typical early seventies cop and action thriller about two police officers (Elliott Gould and Robert Blake) hunting a mafia boss and finding out that the villain is co-operating with police officials.

Blake and Gould (who is incredibly "groovy" looking) are giving fine performances in this dirty little picture. They are doing raids in whore houses and gay bars, they are beaten up by gangsters and often use their guns to get what they want. Their characters are not far away from those of Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider in "French Connection" which has clearly influenced the settings, tempo and plot of this movie.

Some high points of "Busting" next to the main actors are the funky, Lalo-Schifrin-style sound track and a big showdown between the cops and a bunch of gangsters in a shopping mall battered with people. You can alos find those certain hints of conspiracies and paranoia all over this movie that became benchmarks for later Peter Hyams films such as "Capricorn One", "Outland", or "Star Chamber". Watch this incredible seventies movie, you won't regret it!