Since the success in 2012 of their detective comedy the other side of the ring-roadpublished in Quebec under the title incompatible, Omar Sy and Laurent Lafitte wanted to work together again. Instead of an original project, the cast opted for a late sequel instead. Produced for Netflix, where Omar Sy is a hit in the series Lupine, far from the ring road so bring back the cops Ousmane Diakité and François Monge, who tease each other even more in this second and very laborious lap.
Again, we are in the formula of the mismatched duo. While Diakité (Omar Sy) has risen to the ranks of Criminal Affairs in Paris, Monge (Laurent Lafitte) stagnates in a district police station. Coming from the suburbs, Diakité has retained a taste for unorthodox methods that are tolerated because they bring excellent results. Monge, on the other hand, continues to nurture a feeling of superiority that is all the more disconcerting as all his requests for promotions and transfers were rejected.
This means that, as in the 2012 film, Diakité and Monge evolve in separate universes, with the difference that this time, the roles have been reversed in terms of the prestige of the work environment. The same principle applies with respect to the reunion of the protagonists, who have lost sight of each other over the past decade. After Diakité interfered in a homicide case led by Monge, it is the latter’s turn to maneuver to impose himself in a murder investigation falling under the authority of the former.
A bit like in Good cop, bad cop (Érik Canuel, 2006), it is a corpse cut in two that brings about a union of forces. Here, a trunk is discovered in Gare du Nord before the lower part of the body surfaces in a village in the Alps.
On the spot, Diakité quickly identified the popular far-right mayor as a suspect. Monge, he sees nothing but fire. Without revealing anything, let’s just say that the film limits itself to dealing superficially, even lazily, with a theme that has once again become hot topical issues in the light of the recent French elections.
Random Achievement
Predictable at every turn, the film multiplies with the regularity of a metronome the scenes of conflicts between the two policemen. Alas, the comic content of these, if it fluctuates, never reaches a high degree of hilarity: weariness sometimes gives way to embarrassment for the actors. Willingly stretched until diluted, said passages fall flat most of the time.
Thus, a theoretically promising sequence, such as the one where Monge laments the professional injustice to which he is subjected as a white man born into wealth in the face of a Diakité who retorts with irony that he is indeed much better off to climb the ladder in France when one was born black and poor, is short-circuited by this failing rhythm, the corollary of a random realization and an indifferent editing.
Even action scenes filmed along winding mountain roads prove to be devoid of adrenaline. In this respect, it is probably more for his first car chase films The carrier 1 and 2 that director Louis Leterrier has just been chosen to replace Justin Lin at the helm of Fast and Furious 10.
Be that as it may, the main problem with this detective comedy, whose humor misses the mark and whose plot hardly intrigues, is due to the astonishing lack of complicity between the two stars. As everyone is busy polishing their own star, Omar Sy and Laurent Lafitte never seem to be together in the moment. For a “friends movie”, or buddy movie as we say in France, it’s a bit problematic. A sequel, we hope, that will remain without a future.