On the occasion of the broadcast on Arte des Ripoux, we invite you to play with seven French crime feature films. Can you find all the titles only with the image of the cop in the center of the film?
In 2001, we discovered Denzel Washington in Training Day as a rotten cop imposing his more than dubious methods on the young LAPD recruit Jake Hoyt played by Ethan Hawke. A pitch that could recall that of a French film released twenty years earlier, Les Ripoux with headlining Philippe Noiret and Thierry Lhermitte.
With a notable difference, however, because where the differences in methods and conceptions of the police profession between the two men led to a frontal confrontation in the American film, the young promoted full of ambitions François Lesbuche will end up participating in the shenanigans of his colleague, becoming like him a “ripou” in French film.
Les Ripoux, released in 1984, was directed by Claude Zidi, a filmmaker then well known to the general French public, he who had already released several popular successes in the past decade that have since become classics: L’Aile ou la thigh, Inspector Labavure or again Les Sous-doués and its sequel.
This new film is a new hit with nearly six million admissions at the box office, and three Césars received, including those for Best Film and Best Director. Nothing less was needed to make this success a franchise with the releases of Ripoux contre Ripoux in 1990 and Les Ripoux 3 in 2003.
The first film is rebroadcast this evening on Arte, which made us want to offer you a quiz on French detective films. With a simple concept: a policeman in the image, three proposals, which film? It’s up to you to investigate!