A streetwise Paris policeman who takes kickbacks from the minor criminals on his beat to allow them to continue is assigned an idealistic new partner fresh from police academy. He sets out to corrupt him...
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People are voting emotionally.
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
No sign of the Louvres, the Champs-Elysees , the Eifel tower , the 'bateau-mouche' on the Seine , the Arc de Triomphe or any of the usual sights that one would normally associate with the city of romance in this movie. The one exception is perhaps a blurry view of Sacre- coeur in the background , albeit very briefly.Instead , we're treated with a perhaps over-realistic version of this beloved city , with an extremely 'bent' policeman (Noiret) who is given the clean country boy (Lhermitte) as a new partner. The comedy stems from Lhermitte's transformation from an " Elliot Ness" type of honesty , to eventually become more dishonest than Noiret himself. Incidentally , the term 'ripoux' stems from a french type of slang , whereby the syllables in a word are phonetically reversed , so in this instance , ripoux = pouris , which means 'rotten' or 'garbage' . A great little movie which spawned 2 sequels ( of inferior quality , but let's be honest, sequels usually are ).
Philippe Noiret plays a leather-jacketed corrupt cop who is the king of his little bailiwick in one of those corners of Paris tourists never see, gruffly administering rough justice while collecting bribes and sweeteners right and left. All is well until he's stuck with a rookie partner, a handsome straight arrow college graduate (Thierry Lhermitte) with ambitions to be police commissioner one day, who believes in arresting lawbreakers instead of chasing them into someone else's neighborhood, and who is definitely cramping Noiret's style and cutting into his income. What to do? Noiret and his longtime lover, an ex-hooker who owns a bar, decide that the best way to humanize this guy is to get him involved with an expensive new girlfriend who he can't afford on a cop's salary. A suitable working girl is found, the expected happens, and by the end Noiret is retired (after a short stretch in the can) and Lhermitte has inherited his place and his way of life.No surprises along the way, but a very enjoyable ride.
I have only seen this film with subtitles and it is the only foreign film I have watched that I have forgotten, I was reading the subtitles in the first place. (I do not speak French)The film is a masterpiece. The second Ripoux contre Ripoux is good but Just an avenue to soak up a few franks in revenue for all involved and lacked the originality of the original, like many part two film's.Apart from the Godfather Etc. and Une Taxi Mauve, The Purple Taxi, Also with Phillipe Noiret is a forgotten gem. The comedy in Le Ripoux has never been matched since and everything just bonds, Writing ,Acting, Directing and Soundtrack, Yes I think this soundtrack added to the film.
... or, if you don't speak Pig Latin/Backslang, top drawer. Pig Latin had a vogue in the forties - and possibly earlier - and for a time it was commonplace to hear expressions like 'amscray' (scram) in low-budget Hollywood movies. If the US had Pig Latin France has 'verlan' or 'la langue de banlieues' (the language of the suburbs). Pourri, which means 'rotten' when transposed to verlan comes out ripoux, thus Le Ripoux, The Rotten. It's basically our old friend the veteran taking the rookie under his wing, in this case veteran cop, Philippe Noiret, who's also a BENT veteran cop, if anyone asks you, is lumbered with green-as-grass rookie Therry Thermitte. Believe me, it's a match made in Heaven. Not a lot happens but the trick is, IT HAPPENS IN FRENCH and that gallic flavor makes all the difference. It was so good that six years later they made a sequel, and last year they made a sequel to the sequel. Hooray. 9/10