THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (1974)
Grade: C
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Screenplay: Thomas Rickman
Starring: Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gosset Jr., Albert Paulsen, Mario Gallo, Joanna Cassidy
THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN opens with a massacre set on a city bus. Director Rosenberg cuts between a blazing machine gun (manned by an unseen assailant) to passengers being splattered with bright red kool-aid blood. After offing nearly everyone aboard, the gunmen hops off the still moving bus as a lone witness looks on.
Rosenberg films this scene with a frenetic glee; he knows the images are violent and horrifying and uses them to get a rise out of his audience. While in the 90's that concept might seem relatively antiquated, in 1974, when this film was made, it was just beginning to be employed. In films like DELIVERANCE and THE WILD BUNCH violence was used to startle us. Sam Peckinpah (THE WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS) said he had no intention of glorifying violence in his films. He simply wanted to show it for the sake of realism. In DELIVERANCE, violence was similarly utilized to shock us and make us squirm in our seats.
With the release of DIRTY HARRY in 1971, cinematic violence was presented in a decidedly different light. This time the perpetrator was the hero, a justice-seeking cop who takes the law into his own hands because the "system" no longer works. That movie contended that the "system" was just as corrupt as the criminals it institutionalized. DIRTY HARRY championed vigilante justice; its hero was given the right (by the film makers) to use as much brutal force as he assumed necessary to attain justice. This ideology was taken further with an onslaught of vigilante movies arguably commencing with DEATH WISH. In that film Charles Bronson plays a pacifist turned vigilante after an attack on his wife and child by a clan of pugnacious street punks. The audience is encouraged to cheer as this sad-eyed intellectual becomes a man, ostensibly by channeling the brute animal from within. He acquires a gun, and coldly offs the various degenerates that clutter the night time streets. The perception of violence had been altered. In cinema, it was viewed as less than a problem; it could be a potential solution.
The grim brutality of LAUGHING POLICEMAN'S opening works as a justification for its grizzled cop heroes to use whatever tactics they see fit in order to obtain probity. Once again the hero cops, castigated by the "system", disobey their orders for "justice", while the audience cheers on.
In LAUGHING POLICEMAN, Walter Matthau (doing his best Jack Webb) grimly plays the "Clint Eastwood" figure. Matthau has been stripped of his self-effacing smarmyness, and in a sense stripped of his charm. Somber and belligerent, his character immerses himself in his work pushing his fashionably estranged family to the side. Matthau speaks in gruff mumbles ("What?!. . .Where!. . .Be there in 5 minutes") as if he hadn't the patience to say anymore. It's a role that really anybody could play…so why give it to such a talented comedic performer like Matthau?
We find out that his partner happens to be one of the victims on the aforementioned bus. The stereotypically blustery police captain teams up Matthau with the affable Bruce Dern to catch the elusive killer. Naturally, there is tension between the two, and naturally that tension later subsides as the two begin to get to know each other. Also on the case, is Louis Gosset Jr. (IRON EAGLE), as a bad-ass black detective (who looks as if he strutted out of a SUPER FLY flick), made to say things like (as a suspect makes a move for his pocket), "Whatever your reachin' for better be a sandwich, because you're gonna have to eat it"!
The investigation eventually leads them to various strip clubs, a shoot out between a red herring a squad team, obligatory topless strippers (for a 70's cop movie anyway), live sex shows, and eventually, a homosexual nightclub (aptly named The Frolic Room).
LAUGHING POLICEMEN is a fairly straightforward police procedural. It's mildly entertaining and (for film trivia buffs) it's infused with cliches that were just beginning to become cliches. For instance, the killer frequents homosexual dives (an all too frequent motif in 70's cop movies), the police captain is portrayed as a high strung oppressor, and there is a car chase. The flick is so pig-headed in its approach it nearly attains an it's-so-bad-it's-good status. Nearly.
THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN plays like IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT with a spoonful of chic 70's sleaze and a helping of stupidity. This is however somewhat watchable if you're into this sort of thing. It's much easier to swallow than recent pulp thrillers like THE CORRUPTER or 8MM.