Drôle Patrol

Murder was the case: Toronto detective Martin Ward (Colm Feore, left) and Montreal cop David Bouchard (Patrick Huard) must solve a murder at the Quebec-Ontario border in Bon Cop Bad Cop. Photo Dominique Chartrand. Courtesy Alliance Atlantis.

If you need evidence that the two solitudes still exist, look no farther than Canada’s film industry. Quebec has produced Oscar winners (Denys Arcand’s Les invasions barbares) as well as crass crowd pleasers (the Les Boys franchise), and francophone films now make up 20 per cent of Quebec’s box-office returns. English Canada, meanwhile, continues to struggle: homegrown films hold a mere one per cent of the national box office.

The Montreal-based filmmaking team of Érik Canuel and Kevin Tierney hopes to spread a bit of that popular appeal around with the crime-comedy Bon Cop Bad Cop. It has already proven a hit in Quebec: Bon Cop Bad Cop earned more than $1.4 million in its opening weekend (Aug. 4-6), the largest first-weekend gross ever for a Quebec-made film. Since then, it has surpassed the $4 million mark. It arrives in English Canada on Friday.

The drama begins when a corpse is found perched on top of the welcome sign at the Quebec-Ontario border. It’s that police-story cliché: who has jurisdiction? In a characterization that steals liberally from Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, Patrick Huard plays David Bouchard, a rebellious Montreal cop who immediately clashes with Martin Ward, a straight-laced Toronto detective played by Colm Feore. One murder follows another, and it soon becomes clear that the serial killer is preying upon members of Toronto’s hockey community. Detectives Bouchard and Ward must overcome their differences and mutual dislike in order to save the day.

Director Canuel really pushes the hockey shtick: the killer wears a goalie mask and likes to hold a stick to the necks of his victims as though it were a butcher knife. Bon Cop Bad Cop is unadulterated fromage, but there’s something admirable about Canuel’s operatic style. The director behind Quebec box-office successes like Le Survenant, La loi du cochon and Nez rouge, Canuel is intent on pushing the boundaries of taste, making this a kitschy roller-coaster ride that revels in buddy-film clichés.

“In a sense, this really isn’t that original,” concedes Canuel during a recent interview at a Montreal sidewalk café, running a hand through his silver hair. “Patrick Huard approached me with the idea. At first it was a cop-buddy flick, but then it took on all these political overtones. Then the idea of a bilingual film became very appealing.”

Alliance Atlantis is confident that Bon Cop Bad Cop will have solid coast-to-coast appeal. The country’s largest film distributor is spending about $1 million on a promotional campaign, complete with a making-of documentary (to air only in Quebec) and ads aimed at reaching the young male demographic most inclined to see action movies.

Alliance Atlantis had some success in English Canada with The Rocket, the francophone biopic of Quebec hockey legend Maurice Richard. In Quebec, the picture took in several million dollars; thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by Alliance Atlantis, The Rocket also earned close to a million outside Quebec — quite a feat given that it’s French with subtitles. (Apparently, the Alliance Atlantis people feel hockey is the magic bullet in the national-unity conundrum.)

Though it tries to lampoon each solitude equally, Bon Cop Bad Cop is the kind of generic comic/action movie that has proven more saleable in Quebec than in the rest of Canada. The Canada-Quebec gap becomes apparent when you look at the film’s cast. After starring in three instalments of the immensely popular Les Boys hockey series, Huard is a household name in la belle province. While Colm Feore is one of English Canada’s most respected thespians, he can’t claim the same status.

Director Érik Canuel. Photo Laurence Labat. Courtesy Alliance Atlantis.

“English Canada has amazing film talent,” Canuel says. “[But it] is where Quebec was 10 years ago. English Canada needs a slapstick comedy or action movie to do very well. After the success of films like Les Boys and Seraphin, people in Quebec were also willing to go and see the smaller, more artistic films, like Gaz bar blues and C.R.A.Z.Y.”

Canuel drew on a wide variety of influences for Bon Cop Bad Cop — which is not such a shocker, given the film’s over-the-top tone. The film includes a murderer in a hockey mask, kidnapping, car chases, a bar brawl, lots of gore and plenty of coal-black comedy.

“I’m a big fan of David Fincher, so there’s a touch of Seven in the film,” says Canuel. “I’ve seen all the Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and Rush Hour movies many times. I tried to break up the code a bit when I could, though. I certainly work to play with expectations, especially in terms of who the killer is. I also drew on Ridley Scott, in particular Alien and Blade Runner. I thought of 24, which has been an amazing series.”

The use of the buddy genre as a way of making a quintessential Canadian movie points to an essential contradiction in Bon Cop Bad Cop. While the film strives to be all things Canadian, it is doing so through the prism of a distinctly American formula.

“But if you look at France, they do cop-buddy movies very well. They take the clichés and make them their own. The gangster movie has been done very well in America. But look at Britain: they do their own variations on it, like Sexy Beast, which was incredible. We wanted to work with cliché, to make those clichés our own.”

Canuel is quite aware of the fate of films that were expected to be sure-fire hits, notably the biopic Bethune and the heist movie Foolproof, both of which tanked upon arrival, despite the best of intentions. While he acknowledges the experimental attempts at crossover appeal, Canuel is confident about Bon Cop Bad Cop’s fortunes. Can the two solitudes really be united at the local multiplex? Can French and English Canada learn to love each other through the big screen?

Canuel was buoyed by the film’s world premiere at Montreal’s hugely popular Fantasia Film Festival in July. Bon Cop Bad Cop was the closing film and the sold-out crowd “ate it up,” he reports.

“They screamed and cheered at all the right moments. Bon Cop Bad Cop has everything: I guarantee people will have a good time at this movie.”

Bon Cop Bad Cop opened Aug. 4 in Quebec and opens Aug. 18 across Canada.

Matthew Hays is a Montreal writer.

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