The Cop (1971)

Best movie ever!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This was a rather more than faithful adaptation of the Pierre Lesou's novel. A fierce story about two vengeance schemes involved one in the other. Two friends decide to avenge the death of one of their own and then kill a cop whose his friend decides to avenge him...Follow me? You have here one of best Michel Constantin's performances ever. Don't miss him facing Michel Bouquet. His lines are unforgettable. But something is missing, if you compare to the book. HOW DAN ROVEL'S CHARACTER GETS OUT OF JAIL? No one seems to have noticed this detail.Typical from Yves Boisset about the power of police, and the way cops sometimes can trespass the law. A true powerful film.

Tough-as -Cop thriller from a clearly not-so-belle France, directed with a real flair for capturing gritty urban violence by Yves Boisset, whose muscular direction translates into suitably grimy thick-ear entertainment. Michel Bouquet is genuinely chilling as the hard boiled copper whose amoral and brutal journey to avenge the fruitless death of a fellow officer leads him deep into a violent existential nightmare. 'Un Conde' is a magnificently bleak, philosophical euro crime from France which works brilliantly as a savage expose of police barbarity, dealing unflinchingly with the ultimate societal conundrum; must one become like the beasts in order to deal with the beast? The only thing that mars this fabulous Gallic treat is that the source VHS print is a trifle muddy. A lush full-monty DVD-Bluray needs to be organised for this fine example of French Nihilism.

I saw this film when it was first released in the US (1970, I believe). I found it pessimistic, ugly, and gratuitously violent. I hated it. However it has stayed in my mind not because of its content but because of the circumstances under which I saw it.I was working the snack counter at a small college-town theater. I don't recall what movie was playing, some inoffensive middle-of-the-road feature that attracted inoffensive middle-of-the-road viewers. The manager had just received Un Conde and wanted to test audience reaction. So he decided to "sneak preview" it--without warning--before the main feature. Looking back I wonder what was going through his mind. Had he even seen the film? At any rate, from almost the first frame characters on screen were getting the crap beat out of them. The audience gasped and began murmuring. The mayhem didn't let up and soon the audience was making for the exits. An angry throng mobbed the ticket counter demanding their money back.In 1970 excessive violence was relatively uncommon in mainstream films, and Un Conde was right at the cutting edge. It certainly wasn't what this audience had come to see. About twenty minutes into the movie the manager finally stopped the show and put on the scheduled picture. But by that time he'd pretty much cleared the house. With all the refunds the till came up awfully light at the end of the evening.

Yves Boisset's "Un condé" (from the French slang for cop) is a sort of Gallic "Dirty Harry", a police thriller that raises awkward questions about how far across the line the good guys can step in order to clear up society's mess. Inspector Favenin (Michel Bouquet) undoubtedly goes too far. When his idealistic but ineffectual partner is killed pursuing the culprits of a gang revenge attack (a pursuit instigated by Favenin himself), the embittered cop, realising that conventional police methods won't work, takes matters into his own hands.At first, it's hard to resist cheering as he takes on the worst of the gang thugs using their own methods. But when his ruthless pursuit for revenge starts to impinge on the more sympathetic characters in the story, including an essentially decent man who gets beaten up in front of his young son, we are forced to question where our sympathies lie.Boisset's functional, low-key direction, while lacking the stylistic flamboyance of Melville, serves the story well, and makes the frequent outbursts of violence all the more shocking. Bouquet is well-cast as the soft-spoken, solitary, buttoned-up and near-psychopathic Favenin, a more complex (and scarier because unpredictable) character than Eastwood's Harry Callahan. Whereas in "Dirty Harry" the hero's methods are questionable but his goals are morally correct, Favenin clearly has more personal motives that are not necessarily consistent with the public good. Even so, his pragmatic boss is willing to overlook his actions provided they can be covered up.In a minor role, Michel Constantin, a stalwart of many French gangster movies, gives one of his best performances here as a fatalistic hired gun; his confrontation with Favenin is a highlight of the film.