THE DVD BEAT: The Laughing Policeman

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (1973)
dir. by Stuart Rosenberg
starring: Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, and Lou Gossett(minus the Jr.)

Like Chris and I'm learning quickly, Kennelworthy, I am a ridiculously huge movie buff; a crack addict if you will. And not to toot my own horn, but I've seen well over five thousand films, and there are a ton I have yet to see that I at least know quite a bit about. So, it's nice once and awhile to come across a small gem that has so far gone undetected in my movie knowledge.

Here's a story that leads up to me seeing this film. A couple of weeks ago I was at a dog show and talking to a guy I've seen at quite a few of the shows but never talked to before. Come to find out, he's a huge movie buff. So, we start talking, and somehow we get on the subject of Walter Matthau films. We talk about "Charade," "The Odd Couple," "The Bad News Bears," and we might have even thrown in "Grumpy Old Men." I mention that one of my favorite Matthau performances and films is a 1970's cop thriller called "The Taking of Pelham 123." If you guys haven't seen it, I highly reccomend it. Walter Matthau plays a cop who must take on a hostage situation aboard a subway. Quentin Tarantino pays homage to it in "Reservoir Dogs" when he names all of his criminals Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde, and so on. My new movie buff friend says he likes it too and asks if I've seen "The Laughing Policeman." I had never even heard of it. He goes on to explain that it's another 1970's cop thriller that Matthau was in, and only about three people actually saw it when it came out, but it is definately worth checking out. A couple days later I'm perusing Aint-it-cool-news and on Harry's "April DVD Release List" what do I see, but noneother than "The Laughing Policeman" is coming to DVD. A couple days later I get my new "Premiere" and in the DVD review section is a snippet on "The Laughing Policeman." I feel at this point that maybe I'm destined to see this rare film. Last Tuesday, I'm making my usual Best Buy trip to pick up some new releases like "Bad Education" and "Hotel Rwanda," and I decide to see if they have this Matthau film that has been haunting me, and surely enough it's there and it's only 7 bucks, so I say what the hell and pick it up.

Now, after all of that, is it any good you may ask? Thankfully, the answer is yes. Starting with "Bullitt" in 1968 and throughout the seventies there were a lot of these gritty, dark police procedurals released. You know, the ones that looked like they were filmed on used reels. "Dirty Harry," "The French Connection," and the forementioned "Pellham" are some of the more popular ones. "The Laughing Policeman" is not on the same level as these classics, but it should be seen by more than the handfull that have already seen it.

The movie opens up with an unknown assailant boarding a bus and blowing away the eight passengers on it, one of which is Matthau's present partner on the force. The rest of the movie involves Matthau's hard nosed detective trying to find out who did this, so he can get his revenge and get on with his rogue cop existence. This all might seem pretty standard, but where the movie prevails is by having a really good mystery to back everything else up. Throughout the investigation the police discover that everyone on the bus has a lot of shadiness in their past including Matthau's former partner, so why the incident even happened takes precedence over who actually committed the crime.

Stuart Rosenberg's direction is really good here. Rosenberg has directed his fair share of good films (Cool Hand Luke, The Drowning Pool, The Pope of Greenwich Village) and his fair share of bad films (the original Amityville Horror, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys). "The Laughing Policeman," despite it's ridiculous title falls in the former category. The writer is Thomas Rickman who doesn't fall prey to a lot of cheesy one liners that usually fills these types of films (especially in the eighties when police films went from dark and gritty to buddy cop formulas). Rickman also keeps the mystery simple and logical enough to where the viewer can guess the outcome just as well as the characters on screen. There's no cheap resolution here; it all makes perfect sense and it's a nicely done payoff.

If I have any problems with the film, it's that besides the intriguing mystery, there's not a lot else to get too interested in here. Matthau is good, as is Dern and Gossett, but they are never given more depth than say a character on "Law and Order." So, there's no memorable characters here like Harry Callahan in "Dirty Harry" or Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection." But the mystery is what drives this film, and in the end it makes it more than worthy of a viewing. And at seven dollars, you might as well go ahead and pick it up. And then the next time you're in a Walter Matthau conversation or one involving cop movies of the seventies, you can be smarter than everyone else by saying, "Well, have you ever seen "The Laughing Policeman"?"

FINAL GRADE - B