The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Best movie of this year hands down!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

From the early-70's zenith of crime and police-centered films, 'The Laughing Policeman' deserves credit, respect and recognition as a fine, gritty, accurate work that shows the way real officers interact and go through their work-days and solve crimes. Walter Matthau, mostly known for his astute comedic touch, is excellent, as is Bruce Dern, who's promoted to an uneasy partnership with Matthau, when the latter's partner, who was on vacation yet took an unsolved case home with him, is at the wrong place at the wrong time, part of a brutal mass murder on board a bus. The well-directed script shows how alienated a good policeman is from his family, how hated he is by most of the community, and the blind alleys and dead ends he has to go through in order to solve the case, and have it hold up in a court of law. It's 'Dirty Harry' or the 'French Connection' films done honestly, not as a fever dream of wish fulfillment from the policeman's perspective (though I must admit I love those too!)...

Disappointing.Not all of Hollywood's "gritty urban 70s thrillers" were classics - in fact most of them were fairly indistinguishable in look (drab) and feel (flat) from their TV show cousins, apart from much stronger language and violence. Indeed, The Laughing Policeman plays like a feature length episode of The Streets Of San Francisco, complete with older-cop/younger-cop buddy schtick but without the charm. I don't know if this movie "inspired" that old TV show or vice versa, and frankly I doubt anyone cares now.It begins with a mass murder on a bus that's certainly harrowing and grimly intriguing. Enter Matthau's downbeat detective to solve the case. But then about ten minutes in, I noticed something. Matthau was irritating me. But that's impossible! I love Matthau! But almost immediately I saw that all of his character's relentless gum chewing and taciturn blankness were imposed characteristics rather than real character traits. I have a feeling Matthau didn't quite get a handle on the part and opted to coast. Consequently, we never quite see the character. We see Matthau working. He's a wonderful actor, but was simply miscast here. His lovely loping gate and demeanour suggest a humour that never actually materialises. It's just not there in the script for him. The effect is discombobulating and irritating (my advice: stick with The Taking Of Pelham 123 - the Matthau cop movie that got it right). Bruce Dern also seems miscast. Dern, a good actor, is always at his best playing vaguely sinister mid-westerners whose toothy grins camouflage psychotic belligerence. He plays his character here as a mildly obnoxious borderline a-hole. That's a problem when we're supposed to care for him for two hours. Anti-heroes can make for fascinating movie characters, but Dern's cop is not bad-boy enough nor deep enough to be interesting. He's just... mildly obnoxious. Phfft.As the movie grinds along, piling on every urban movie cliché you can think of, the plot is revealed to be not so much complex as contrived and silly. Apparently, the film was considered to be agreeably off-kilter by its contemporaneous critics, but now its internal rhythms feel just outright faulty. Worse, it addresses social issues (race, sexuality etc) in un-nuanced ways that would be unthinkable ten years later, or even, ironically enough, ten years earlier. Multiple story arcs and sub-characters simply evaporate (it's typical of the film that Lou Gossett's potentially interesting character is not given a decent pay-off. The film might have been better remembered if he'd played Dern's part), a pitifully ersatz French Connection type car chase is thrown in just to be fashionable, and the whole thing has an ending that I confess to not understanding. I completely lost interest 15 minutes earlier so probably missed some "important" plot exposition. And I don't care.I feel so sorry for director Stuart Rosenberg even at this distance in time. In 1967 he made Cool Hand Luke, a brilliant iconic film of the period. Six years later, stuff like this. What happened? Bad scripts, bad advice, bad luck? Life, I guess. It's odd that quite a few other directors who made fantastic debuts in the late 60s found themselves adrift in the 70s, their style perhaps more suited to an era that ended just before they could make the most of it.

Every time I find a Matthau movie I've never seen I eagerly wait to find it on DVD or some way I can watch it. He usually carries the whole movie on his back but in this case, he was dead flat to say the least.This one was slow as marbles on a flat board. I mean the whole setup was painfully slow and missing parts that could have made this more interesting. They didn't delve too much into the dead cop's background, but just enough for you to wanna know more. What Cathy Lee Crosby's role in this is a mystery to me. She meant nuthin to it except she may have been a lesbian, or not. Could have been the dead cop's kinky girlfriend, or not.Bruce Dern turns this one into something watchable. He's usually the quirky smarta#* in most of his roles and he's no different in this one but his lines are far and away the best in this missed opportunity. It amazes me he never got bigger roles than he did. He's such a fun actor to watch. He was a gem in this one.

I caught this on a movie channel a couple weeks ago and knew that it was supposed to be pretty good, Dern plays the new partner of the cop whose partner is killed, and as the plot reveals it is connected to an old case his old partner was reinvestagating. It has a few good and unexpected twist that was highly enjoyable and a climatic end that was well executed.The very last scene had me cracking up when the cop brings the guy in that looks like the boxer and Walter Matthau tells him that's 'it's a bit too late for that' and walks off.overall 8/10.