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.
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.