The European Crime Movie Thread

A thread for krimis, polars and...I guess giallo, though for this thread I think it'd be more interesting to focus on the ones that emphasize the police procedural aspect than straight-up gore/horror. There's a huge european tradition of doing cops & robbers flicks, but as far as I can tell the only stuff that's gotten much in the way of critical attention bestowed on it is the classic french existentialist stuff (Wages Of Fear, Le Jour Se Leve and so on), and Jean Pierre Melville. Yet there are hundreds of gritty crime flicks featuring Alain Delon, Jean Paul Belmondo, Franco Nero (or hell, Michael Caine, might as well throw the UK in there too, especially since Get Carter totally jibes with the aesthetic I'm grasping towards here) running about major european cities killing baddies, and while I'm more than ready to accept that most of these are crap, surely they can't all be worthless?

So if any chewers have good reccomendations in this area, I'm all ears. What are the euro equivalents of Dirty Harry, The Killer or Violent Cop?

Italian crime cinema seems to be slightly better represented on DVD than its french or german (surely there must be SOME genre crime flick with Kinski slumming it as a gangster or detective?) equivalents. Spillover from spaghetti western and horror fandom, I guess? Keep the suggestions coming, at any rate - Street Law by Castellari was one of the movies that inspired this thread.

Yeah, I've heard France has had some sort of ressurgence in genre cinema. I suppose this thread must get around to Besson at some point, too, although I sorta hate him.

Anyone know about the german Edgar Wallace movies? The info I have is that they're more in the giallo, post-gothic horror mode than the ALAIN DELON IS GOING TO PISTOL-WHIP YOU violent cop style that I intended this thread for, but the main question is: are they good? And are there any less horror-influenced german krimis, you know, like Tatort but with better actors and good?

Thanks Malmordo, you always drop the genre movie knowledge.

The UK counts as Europe (sometimes) and the movie is almost entirely set in Spain, so I just wanna give a shout-out to Stephen Frear's criterionized The Hit. Ex-gangster living in reclusion gets kidnapped by the servants of old acquaintances trying to get him back for snitching on them, sordid existentialist road trip ensues. Beautiful photography, great performances from a cast including Terence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth, and a storyline that always stays just the right side of cheesy. Highly reccomended to Jarmush fans.

French Crime Flick Bonanza! Original and english titles included for maximum searchability.

À Double Tour - Early Chabrol Nouvelle Vague whodunnit - except the murder happens pretty late in the game and the "mystery" is pretty half-arsed. That's ok, though: it's mostly an excuse for a campy, libido filled comedy of manners, with a gloriously profane young Jean Paul Belmondo. Great ending shot, too.

Le Clan Des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan - One hell of a bill: Jean Gabin, Alain Delon AND Lino Ventura, plus a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. Mostly this is a typically 60's caper flick, but with an uncharacteristically bleak third act. Great fun once you accept it for what it is - the mafia aspect certainly comes from a pre-Godfather era.

Le Cerveau/The Brain - Absolutley wretched heist comedy starring Belmondo and David Niven. Just to give you an idea of the sort of humour involved, Niven is "the Brain", a criminal so brilliant that the weight of his brain makes his head lean sideways. There's a scene where Niven is explaining his plan, Italian Job style, via a crudely animated sequence that feels like something out of 70's underground animation. Eli Wallach shows up as a mafioso but basically behaves like Tuco through the whole movie. Soundtrack by The American Breed. I know this all makes it sound kinda entertaining but, believe me, it's a miserable experience.

Le Profissionel /The Professional - Belmond's big eighties comeback movie, a box office record breaker in France. Not truly a crime thriller - more of a political conspiracy movie, but it's still all about cops and car chases, so. Belmondo plays a spy who gets sold out by the French government, coming back to exact his revenge; sadly Belmondo has way too likeable a persona to do a convincing cold blooded killer. A very stupid movie in a lot of ways, but there are some pretty cool stunts. Features a hot lesbian rapist cop and Belmondo lecturing an african dicator on the evils of cultural relativism.

Le Battant/Ice (US home video title - wtf?) - Directed by and starring Alain Delon, this is probably the best out of those 80's Delon/Belmondo cop movie star vehicles I've seen. Delon plays a fall guy who's out of jail and thirsting for revenge - the movie is appealingly dark and nilhistic for most of its duration, and there's plenty stylish time capsule type shots...a France already a far cry from the Nouvelle Vague era, but where beer still gets served on saucers. What prevents the movie from being a true classic is mostly to do with Delon's ego - Alain the director will not consent that Alain the actor could ever come up short in a fight or meet a woman that doesn't want to fuck him. Still, that's kinda part of the fun with these movies - I can wholeheartedly reccomend this.

Pour La Peau D'Un Flic - More 80's Delon, but ropier than Le Battant. Delon's girl gets raped in this and a scene after it he's zinging her with his friend like nothing's happened. Also a hilariously bad soundtrack from some Joe Cocker wannabe. Oh, and Delon feels the need to show off his film fandom by having the girl be a movie buff and inserting this awkwardly into the character's banter. Not worthless if it shows up on TV, but that's it.

Flic Ou Vouyou/Cop Or Hood - Like the first five scenes of this movie feature Jean Paul Belmondo knocking someone the fuck out out of nowhere. He also does some gliding and drives a car into a house. I liked this better than Le Profissionel, even though the plot was very hard to follow and the DVD gave out at the last third.

La Balance/The Nark - If you only check out one movie from the ones I've listed this is the one. Cops try to nail a big shot and a pimp/prostitute get caught in the crossfire; the police want them to turn snitch, thus the title. The movie's very much sympathetic towards the couple's plight, and the cops aren't shown in the most flattering of lights, though you still get why they're doing what they do. Almost militantly unstylized as well - this is total 80's France, with all the bad haircuts that implies, and no good suits in sight. Some great action scenes, too - seriously, check this one out.

The main theme to Flic Ou Vouyou is pretty sweet.

This Facebook group seems to have the right idea regarding french crime flicks; posting some of their film posters to see if it'll get y'all interested in digging this stuff.








And here's Jean Paul Belmondo starring in "never trust a..."

Really gotta see 36.

That "Guardian" article was all right in that it did make me want to see the movies discussed, but mon dieu the cultural bias! Apart from lumping in straight genre directors like Melville with arthouse types like Godard and Truffaut is one thing, but going on to discuss the "honour amongst thieves" and "man corrupted by society" memes as if they were somehow invented and used solely by those pretentious frenchmen and not an integral part of gangster movies pretty much EVERYWHERE (the gangster's moral code is one of the main points of the according to him pointless Get Carter, along with "it's grim up North") is just plain crazy. And it takes some bad faith to assume that french director's use of ennui and existencialism is an attempt to seem "deep" (hate that adjective, btw, it only ever comes up to dismiss something as "not exactly..") and not simply down to the fact that they, like Michael Mann and Johnnie To and, hell, John Huston, are aware that these are great tropes for atmosphere in gangster movies.

Anyone know about Blutiger Freitag/Bloody Friday? Apparently it's the German answer to the polizzotteschi genre; too bad they didn't get a Krautrock band to soundtrack it so the paralell could be complete. No wikipedia page (not even in german!), no YouTube trailer (though someone IS hosting the entire movie, complete with a video description for another movie with the same title.) Here's the IMDB for it.