The Laughing Policeman
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Year: 1973
Rating: 7.0
Whenever I watch a crime film from the 1970's,
it gives me a warm oozy feeling. Pre CGI, pre massive kill counts, pre protagonists
who have no fear, no doubts, no weaknesses. Just a realistic plot, true characters,
grit and fine acting. The title The Laughing Policeman is clearly meant to
be ironic. It comes from the book it is based on by husband-wife authors
Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall who wrote ten Beck crime novels that take place
in Sweden. Here it is changed to San Francisco and Jake Martin. Martin is
played by Walter Matthau, intentionally without a kernel of charm, warmth
or lightness. Just jowls chewing gum relentlessly. Not the Matthau that the
audience had become used to after A New Leaf, Plaza Suite and Pete 'n' Tilly.
He was to go back to comedy but not before he made a detour into three terrific
crime films with this, Charlie Varrick and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
right on top of one another.
I am not sure if it is the weather but most
of the Nordic police that I have come upon in books are gloomy and surly.
Depressed with family issues and frustrated with their jobs. Wahloo
and Sjowall were two of the early Nordic crime writers that have become so
popular over recent years and like the ones that followed they are crimes
that fall into the police procedural genre - grind it out, follow up on every
lead, crack down on informers, shake the tree till something falls out and
that is certainly what happens here. A bus full of people are all killed
by a zip gun. It is a big case and all the cops from a squad are on it. Was
it a psycho, a militant, a gang killing or something else. The audience is
a step ahead of the police because we know that it was to kill one particular
person on the bus - a cop who was following a man and led into this ambush.
But he was doing it on his own time and no one had any idea.
The dead cop was the partner of Jake who
doesn't seem to have had any particular liking for his partner, but when
your partner is killed, you find the killer. His new partner Larsen is played
by a sarcastic unlikable Bruce Dern in cheap suits and wide ties. It takes
only a few minutes to want to kick him out of the car. Full of snide comments
and racism, he puts all the cops off. Dern does it so well though going through
the film seemingly unaware of how much he rankles everyone around him. Jake
doesn't take to him either and ignores him as much as possible and is as
communicative as a polar bear on the North Pole. But they all just hustle
and chase everything down taking them into sex shows, gay bars, strip clubs
- this is San Francisco after all. Nothing turns up. The other cops - Louis
Gossett Jr, Anthony Zerbe among others - are on the streets as well. You
don't kill a cop.
Finally, one little item clicks into place
and Jake jumps on it like a life preserver. All of it feels real - the streets,
the lowlifes, the great scene in the emergency room after the shootings,
the cops complaining and sitting around. Nobody tries to be warm and fuzzy
for the audience. Jake at one point shockingly slaps the girlfriend of his
dead partner because he feels she is holding something back. His home life
is not nourishing with two children that don't have anything to say to him
and a wife who sleeps in a different room. He has his job. And his job is
to find a killer. When it is over, it is over. No celebration, no thanks
from the senior cops - just another case waiting for you. It is directed
by Stuart Rosenberg - Cool Hand Luke, The Drowning Pool, Brubaker, The Pope
of Greenwich Village.
