Two police officers with very different methods and personalities team up for an investigation that takes them far from Paris, to the Alps. What looked like a homicide linked to a settling of scores between small-town thugs will turn out to be a national affair. And will weld the tandem for good.
Posted at 1:30 p.m.
Directed by Frenchman Louis Leterrier, master of action films (Lupine, Elusive, The carrier), far from the ring road is what is nicknamed in the language of Shakespeare a buddy movie. Like Good Cop, Bad Copof From father to cop and other detective comedies that combine the masculine. Also born from the desire of the duo Omar Sy and Laurent Lafitte to work together again, 10 years after the success of the other side of the ring-road, this film holds especially thanks to their beautiful complicity. And the game of the two superstars manages to make us forget its clichés and its weaknesses.
Stéphane Kazandjian’s screenplay takes up all the codes of the genre, but to better turn them into social criticism towards these French people, who are more and more numerous, who flirt with the far right. Because when they land in a small bucolic town at the foot of the Alps, Ousmane (Omar Sy) and François (Laurent Lafitte) will be disoriented and poorly received by the local population; in particular by its devious mayor, who is a member of an anti-immigration party, called France Vive.
When Ousmane points out to the policewoman (Izïa Higelin) who came to pick him up at the station that the mayor seems a bit fascist, she objects…
“But the guy is against blacks, Arabs, Jews, queers, Europe, rap… What do you call that? »
“A good Frenchman,” she replies at the wheel of the car.
So much for the biting tone that slips between the classic action scenes. To appreciate far from the ring road, you have to love stunts, car chases, explosions and distance yourself from verisimilitude. For example, when the duo pursues a teenager for a long time, for no particular reason, in an amusement center. A crazy race that starts in the maze of a “Laser Quest”, moves to a supermarket, and ends in a collision of bumper cars!
The professional and forced relationship of the tandem will become friendly, even intimate. Not without a few allusions to the repressed homosexuality of one and the other… If, in this deep and racist France, we are insulted “by niggers and queers”, the story quickly reassures us about the heterosexuality of the two men.
For example, Ousmane surprises his buddy François to take a long look at the curves of the mayor’s wife, in a sexist scene, quite gratuitous. This takes a long shower, with all the doors open, while her son is in the next room! On this, France Vive and Paris are on the same wavelength. In 2022, in a hit comedy, a Frenchwoman is never free of her cinematic destiny… She remains first and foremost an object of desire and pleasure for guys. As open-minded as they are.
Exclusively on Netflix
Crime comedy
far from the ring road
Louis Leterrier
Omar Sy, Laurent Lafitte, Izia Higelin
1:59