The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Good concept, poorly executed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Disappointing.Not all of Hollywood's "gritty urban 70s thrillers" were classics - in fact most of them were fairly indistinguishable in look (drab) and feel (flat) from their TV show cousins, apart from much stronger language and violence. Indeed, The Laughing Policeman plays like a feature length episode of The Streets Of San Francisco, complete with older-cop/younger-cop buddy schtick but without the charm. I don't know if this movie "inspired" that old TV show or vice versa, and frankly I doubt anyone cares now.It begins with a mass murder on a bus that's certainly harrowing and grimly intriguing. Enter Matthau's downbeat detective to solve the case. But then about ten minutes in, I noticed something. Matthau was irritating me. But that's impossible! I love Matthau! But almost immediately I saw that all of his character's relentless gum chewing and taciturn blankness were imposed characteristics rather than real character traits. I have a feeling Matthau didn't quite get a handle on the part and opted to coast. Consequently, we never quite see the character. We see Matthau working. He's a wonderful actor, but was simply miscast here. His lovely loping gate and demeanour suggest a humour that never actually materialises. It's just not there in the script for him. The effect is discombobulating and irritating (my advice: stick with The Taking Of Pelham 123 - the Matthau cop movie that got it right). Bruce Dern also seems miscast. Dern, a good actor, is always at his best playing vaguely sinister mid-westerners whose toothy grins camouflage psychotic belligerence. He plays his character here as a mildly obnoxious borderline a-hole. That's a problem when we're supposed to care for him for two hours. Anti-heroes can make for fascinating movie characters, but Dern's cop is not bad-boy enough nor deep enough to be interesting. He's just... mildly obnoxious. Phfft.As the movie grinds along, piling on every urban movie cliché you can think of, the plot is revealed to be not so much complex as contrived and silly. Apparently, the film was considered to be agreeably off-kilter by its contemporaneous critics, but now its internal rhythms feel just outright faulty. Worse, it addresses social issues (race, sexuality etc) in un-nuanced ways that would be unthinkable ten years later, or even, ironically enough, ten years earlier. Multiple story arcs and sub-characters simply evaporate (it's typical of the film that Lou Gossett's potentially interesting character is not given a decent pay-off. The film might have been better remembered if he'd played Dern's part), a pitifully ersatz French Connection type car chase is thrown in just to be fashionable, and the whole thing has an ending that I confess to not understanding. I completely lost interest 15 minutes earlier so probably missed some "important" plot exposition. And I don't care.I feel so sorry for director Stuart Rosenberg even at this distance in time. In 1967 he made Cool Hand Luke, a brilliant iconic film of the period. Six years later, stuff like this. What happened? Bad scripts, bad advice, bad luck? Life, I guess. It's odd that quite a few other directors who made fantastic debuts in the late 60s found themselves adrift in the 70s, their style perhaps more suited to an era that ended just before they could make the most of it.

this is one movie i can't say i liked or disliked.it was all story,not much anything else,which isn't necessarily bad.it was mostly as slow as molasses flowing uphill in January,yet just interesting enough to keep watching.it was also pretty glum,in my opinion.of course the typical stereotypes of the era are here in full force.not a horrible movie by any standard,but not great by any standard either.it's one of those movies where i could take it or leave it.after it ended,i was pretty much indifferent o the whole thing.it wouldn't matter to me whether i saw it again or not.but maybe i'm being too hard on it.maybe it is what it was supposed to be,a simple crime drama.anyway,for me,The laughing Policeman is a 5/10

I was in the navy at the time and I had just came back from Treasure Island and was coming through the bus terminal and I watched them make this movie. I was there for the when the opening scene where the Chinese guy was playing the pinball machine and ran to catch the bus. I also saw the SWAT scene be filmed. But on top of that it was a good movie and Bruce Dern was excellent. I would recommend this movie to anyone who just wants a good fun movie to watch. I did find it funny where the Mission St Bus finally ended up too. I loved San Francisco and still do to this day. Hollywood just don't make them like this anymore. It brings back good memories.

Of the books in the Martin Beck series, this and Roseanna are the best at describing a lengthy police investigation, one in which it seems as if no progress is being made. As I recall, the killer was an important businessman trying to cover up the long ago, extremely brutal murder of a young woman. The cop who was killed on the bus had taken up the case in what today we call 'a cold case file.' This version repeats a bit of this,but from there it veers off into San Francisco, homosexuals, a laughing Bruce Dern ~~in the book, 'The Laughing Policeman' is the title of an ancient phonograph record~~, and the bonding between two detectives, a theme worn to death in later movies.Matthau is properly rumpled, grumpy and unsmiling, but he is not Beck, who is one of the finest characters created in modern detective fiction. As one reviewer notes, the film is a pale "Bullitt' and it is McQueen who could have given us the definitive Beck.The solving of the case in the book was large part teamwork, which we don't see here, and a small part luck. The case hinged on the misidentification of a car....this would be too dull unless it were done on Law and Order....and the work it took to track down the owner years later.The film is gritty and makes us work to connect the dots, but it does not hold a candle to the book. Oddly James Ellroy used the same massacre idea in LA Confidential and when time came to make the film version, Curtis Hanson got it right.