It’s comforting to know that French buddy cop dramedies can be every bit as silly and preposterous, as many of those made here in the States.
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| Having learned that a vicious killer works for a mysterious protection agency known as Securitec, our unlikely heroes — from left, François (Laurent Lafitte), Alice (Izïa Higelin) and Ousmane (Omar Sy) — debate their next move. |
To the degree that it succeeds at all, The Takedown is a textbook case of star charisma over thin material. Omar Sy, recently seen in the far superior TV miniseries Lupin, lights up the screen here as Ousmane Diakité, a reckless, take-charge detective in Paris’ Police Criminal Division.
Even when spouting the most wincingly awful one-liners — Kazandijian feeds him plenty of those — Sy’s broad grin, mischievous gaze and loping, well-toned physique make him utterly irresistible.
The same cannot be said of Laurent Lafitte’s portrayal of François Monge, an insufferably narcissistic and condescending detective in the Judicial District. François is the epitome of an arrested adolescent: childish, petulant, arrogant, determined to have the last word, and convinced that he’s the smartest person in the room (to the aghast disbelief of everybody else in the room).
Ousmane and François once were partners in the Criminal Division; indeed, this film is a sequel to 2012’s equally clumsy On the Other Side of the Tracks. (One wonders about that lengthy gap; I suspect this new film is prompted mostly by Sy’s rapid rise to fame during the previous decade.)
Following a ludicrous perp collar that takes place during a cage boxing match, and establishes Ousmane’s tendency toward bull-headed brawling, he’s summoned to the scene of a rather grisly crime: the severed upper half of a male body, jammed between two cars of a passenger train. This discovery is made by François, who is at the station by chance.
Their reunion is prickly. Ousmane, now a captain, outranks François, a lieutenant who has repeatedly failed the captain’s exam, and been denied his frequent requests for transfer. No doubt remembering that his former friend is more liability than colleague, Ousmane would prefer to politely wave farewell … particularly when they learn that the victim’s lower half has been found alongside the tracks in a small town in Southeastern France.
Ah, but François isn’t about to put up with that.
(How many dozens — scores! — of times, have we seen the subsequent sequence? “You’re not coming, and that’s final,” intones Person A to Person B, after which we smash-cut to the two of them traveling side by side, a resigned expression on Person A’s face. Leterrier and Kazandijian do nothing to make it fresh here.)
Ousmane and François liaise with local police detective Alice Gauthier (Izïa Higelin), whose perky cuteness triggers yet another quarrel between Ousmane and François, both immediately competing for her affections. I also should mention the entirely gratuitous moment, a bit later, when François pauses to ogle a comely babe taking a shower.
If such wincingly sexist behavior feels like a relic of the 1980s, it’s in equally uncomfortable company with similarly retro jabs at racism and homophobia, most of which emanate from François, oblivious to his frequent attacks of foot-in-mouth disease. Although Kazandijian apparently intends such clumsy banter to be somehow woke and enlightened, it never comes off that way; many viewers likely will regard such exchanges as offensive.
This juvenile frat boy bantering becomes even more questionable when it’s revealed that this tiny community is infested with vicious white nationalist thugs, all of them clearly in thrall to the sinister local mayor (Dimitri Storoge). The case expands to include updated, more insidious versions of Nazi-era methamphetamines, which render subjects impervious to pain or fatigue.
While it’s true that satirizing real-world villains can cut them down to size — think, most famously, of Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator — Kazandijian’s puerile scripting, even when he name-checks Marine Le Pen, isn’t artful enough to rise to such a rarefied level. The increasing influence of white nationalism is every bit as serious a problem in France, as it is here in the States; this film shamefully trivializes such xenophobia.
(Whether intentional or accidental, it’s amusing to note that these French troglodytes favor bear vests and horned helmets, just like some of their American cousins.)
That aside, Leterrier and Kazandijian too frequently succumb to bone-stupid set-pieces. I’ve no idea what to make of the embarrassing moment when Ousmane and François similarly “compete” to comfort the mother of the dismemberment victim, while chickens (!) flutter about the woman’s living room … or an autopsy sequence that finds François gratuitously examining the lower body half’s penis.
The lengthy awkwardness that results when Ousmane and François are forced to share a hotel bed falls totally flat, and each encounter with Alice is more contrived and forced than the one before; Higelin can’t begin to put any authenticity into her character, or Kazandijian’s dialogue.
The action sequences are highlighted by two crazed vehicular chases, the first a wholly improbable — but (in fairness) cleverly choreographed — pell-mell pursuit in arcade “bumper saucers” that jump their confines and race through numerous mall stores. The second, more conventional, finds Ousmane and François chasing the Ultimate Big Bads over hill and dale, in the world’s most resilient Humvee.
Leterrier is no stranger to high-octane thrillers, having cut his teeth helming Jason Statham’s first two Transporter flicks back in 2002 and ’05; he and editor Vincent Tabaillon handle this film’s action sequences with similar pizzazz. Unfortunately, they’re few and far between, leaving too much dead space while Sy and Lafitte wrestle with Kazandijian’s limp efforts at verbal humor.
You’ll need to be very forgiving to find the result entertaining.
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