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.)
