What takes place occurs in a determined and efficient manner, and things don't always go according to plan, but the participants resolutely carry out their assignments. The opening bank robbery is a prime example: a taciturn group of five men led by Richard Crenna rob a seaside bank on a very windy and rainy day. They're all business, from the drive up the street, to each member leaving the car at timed intervals, into the rain and wind, and walking into the bank. When the job starts to go bad, they finish as best they can and drive off into the storm. Later, Crenna is lowered from a helicopter onto a moving train in the middle of the night in order to rob a bag man of the drugs he's carrying. No one says a word, it's all action. It may be laughably fake looking, but it's done very seriously, even when Crenna combs his hair not out of vanity but in order to look less suspicious. This is the mood Melville perfected and Walter Hill recreated so well in The Driver. It's very stripped down, deliberate, and spontaneous. The actors don't say too much, the violence is extremely matter of fact, and everyone goes off into the sunset in their own existential worlds if they don't die first. Which isn't to say that there isn't a story here, there is, one concerning Crenna and cop Alain Delon, and Catherine Denueve, and enough character development to flesh out Crenna's associates quite well, each of them, while also providing for a great dancing scene in Crenna's night club, his strained friendship with Delon, Delon's almost fatalistic approach to policing, all done without the benefit of many words, just a director with a certain style and aesthetic, a very good camera man, and a nice soundtrack.
Review of A Cop
