BON COP SEQUEL NOT BAD
Chemistry intact in fun followup
Let’s cut to the chase for those of you who are not particularly patient. Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 is fun and you really should go see it. But it doesn’t capture lightning in a bottle the way the original did — and that, of course, is not all that surprising. When is the sequel better than the original? OK, The Godfather: Part 2, arguably, but that’s it.
Bon Cop Bad Cop became one of the top-grossing Canadian films ever because it was the first major movie ever to come close to capturing the unique bicultural thing we have going on here in Montreal. Yeah, it wasn’t perfect — and it’s true it would’ve been even cooler if the anglo cop in the bilingual detective duo was from Beaconsfield instead of Ontario, but that’s a minor quibble.
Actor and co-writer Patrick Huard came up with a brilliant high-concept concept — to create a comic thriller modelled on Lethal Weapon but with a Québécois twist, pairing a free-wheelin’, profanity-spouting francophone Montreal cop with a square, straitlaced detective from Ontario. It clicked big time with audiences here on both sides of the linguistic divide, though it really didn’t have anywhere near the same impact outside of la belle province.
Now, 11 years later, David Bouchard (Huard) and Martin Ward (Colm Feore) are back together, a little older, a little greyer and maybe a little wiser. OK, well, maybe Ward is a little wiser. Bouchard is still a bit of a nut, ready to go loco at the slightest provocation.
He’s working undercover trying to keep tabs on a gang of car thieves in Montreal and Ward, who is now working for the RCMP, happens to stumble upon Bouchard and his criminal pals. The two then begin working together to try to figure out what these bad guys are really up to.
It turns out Sylvio DiPietro (Noam Jenkins) and his henchmen are up to something much more nefarious than stealing cars and ... well, let’s just say the plot’s development will stretch the credibility meter pretty darn far for most viewers. I can’t really say much about FBI agent Blaine (Andreas Apergis) without revealing some major spoilers, so let me just mention his role in the story is also a major weak link.
This time around, Huard wrote the screenplay on his own, though he received some advice from Quebec script doctor Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne. What’s clear is Huard and director Alain DesRochers decided to focus more on the action in the new film and less on the comedy of language. There are car chases, loads of explosions, fights and gun play — just another day at the office in Hollywood but not something we often see in Quebec films.
Mostly it’s fun, but I would’ve liked to see a little more of a balance between the cop drama and the rooted-in-Quebec laughs. There are still some good comic moments built around the cultural/linguistic differences between Bouchard and Ward, though by far the funniest scene involves a bunch of slow-witted American border cops laughing at Bouchard’s Québécois accent. They think he’s maybe Swedish!
Part of the strength of the original was the chemistry between Huard and Feore and that’s still there. And there’s even more depth to the partnership 11 years later because you sense the solidarity between these two very different cops. It was also a neat idea to cast Marc Beaupré — who broke out thanks to his role as the bizarre character Marc Arcand in the Radio-Canada cult hit Série noire — as one of the car thieves, Mike Dubois, an eccentric fellow who is relentlessly teased by Bouchard.
But it would’ve been nice if the filmmakers had done more with the other supporting players, notably dynamo standup comic Mariana Mazza as RCMP computer hacker MC, Erik Knudsen as Ward’s troubled son Jonathan and Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse as Bouchard’s daughter. It’s particularly galling that Lucie Laurier only receives a tiny slice of screen time as Bouchard’s wife, Suzie. Adding insult to injury, we mostly see her on Bouchard’s iPhone screen.
Still, who wants to grumble too loudly when you finally have a Québécois film that isn’t afraid to try to be entertaining — usually a dirty word in our local film scene — and hits the mark most of the time.