Bon Cop Bad Cop

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a dark Canadian thriller cop friend’s movie which talks about two officers of the law whereby one is an Ontarian while the other happens to be Quebecois who unenthusiastically joins the police force with an aim of solving a murder mystery. The dialogue in the movie is characterized by some French and English words with the title translation being a wordplay that revolves around the bad cop and the good cop. The movie was filmed back in 2004 and later being released in 2006 August with the director being Erik Canuel, the scriptwriters being Leila Basen and Alex Epstein(Canuel 11). The storyline revolves around the discovery of a dead body of a hockey executive known as Benoit Brisset who was found dead on a billboard located on the border of Ontario and Quebec. As a result, the criminal jurisdiction decides to share the task of investigation between two forces of police and detectives with Martin Wards who hails from Toronto and David Bouchard who comes from Montreal being required to work together in finding the killers.

David Bouchard better known as Patrick Huard turns out to be a rule-bending officer who is also a francophone detective working for Surete du Quebec while Colm Feore also known as Martin Ward is an Anglophone detective from Ontario Provincial law enforcer. The bilingual investigators are supposed to work together through resolving their cultural and professional differences in addition to their prejudices and bigotry. The clues about the death of Benoit Brisset lead the two cops to Sylvain Marcel better known as Luc Therrien in a bar located adjacent the road. At first, they engage in a fight with the suspect and fair enough they manage to detain him in Bouchard’s car trunk(Canuel 16). On that day, Bouchard had promised her daughter that he would be available for the ballet recital and as a result, he drove straight to the venue where he parked his car in the front yard with the suspect being locked in the trunk. After the end of the recital, the two cops emerged and to their disappointment, the car had already been towered for parking in an inappropriate location and as they attempted to chase down the tower, Bouchard’s car exploded with the suspect still in the trunk.

The death of the main witness turned out to be a great challenge and as a result, they decided to search for Therrien premises where they discovered a large marijuana plantation in the basement of his house. They also discovered the body of a hockey team proprietor who had been initially reported missing. Bouchard decided to activate a laser tripwire which as a result set the entire house ablaze destroying the evidence in addition to causing the law enforcers to get high on burning marijuana fumes. Shortly afterward, the two cops were rescued and later disciplined by the police chief who had sent Bouchard in the mission whereby he decided to remove the two cops from the investigation after they laughed hysterically due to the fact that they had been high on marijuana(Marshall 31).

Later on, they discovered the next victim who happened to be living in Toronto whereby they realized that the person committing the murder crime had a pattern that he used in tattooing his fatalities with each tattoo giving a clue of the next victim to be murdered. Every murder was in one way or another connected to a major hockey league in the country whereby the film used thinly camouflaged caricatures of the owners, players and the teams of the National Hockey although it did not use the real league(Hallam 38). The two cops were able to anticipate the next victim who luckily went missing before they could arrest him for further questioning. Bouchard and Ward later appeared in a live hockey broadcast whereby they warned people in the community of hockey to be more vigilant but surprisingly, the killer using tattoos called in to the show and threatened the two officers which caused a brawl between the anchor known as Rick Mercer and the two cops when they tried to hang up the phone.

As time passed on, Ward was attacked in his residence by an assailant wearing a mask and after a struggle; he managed to remove the mask and discovered that it was Therrien the prime suspect. The tattoo killer, later on, kidnapped Bouchard’s daughter which lead to a final disagreement with the two police officers. It was in due course revealed that the killings were being organized and conducted by a bilingual generously proportioned fan of hockey known as Luc Therrien. He worked under unequal sadistic partnership direction since he used to be a sociopathic, psychopathic fan of hockey notion which turned out to be a nationalist symbol in Canada that he felt was being corrupted permanently. This was through the attempts that had been placed to shift the ownership of hockey teams in Canada in order to venture into capitalist groups that were based in the United States(Fuchs 45). He, therefore, used Therrien to commit the murders whereby he used the tattoo signature as a way of sabotaging the hockey league for vandalizing the game through moving various teams such as Quebec Fleur de Lys to the neighboring United States. The cops tried to convince the killer that hockey was just a game which instead fueled more anger on the suspect. Ward was left behind to distract the man as Bouchard reunited with his daughter and after a brief conflict; the killer got blown up by an explosive that he had set. Later on during the credits, news reports were released indicating that the hockey teams would remain in Canada and would not be moved as it had been anticipated.

The movie is usually claimed to be the first bilingual trait film in Canada although the entire accomplishment is based on the 1963 Amanita Pestilens. The film revolves around mixed languages and cultural concepts with most of the scenes in the movie being a mixture of English and French dialogue where the characters rapidly switch from one language to another(Canuel 33). The entire movie used both French and English scripts with the language used in every moment being finalized after the editing was done. Later on, the movie was released in versions which include the Anglophone and the Francophone with the main difference being the subtitles as well as a small number of spoken lines with the DVD including an option to switch subtitles for bilingual viewers.

Francophone humor is evident in the first scene whereby the audience is introduced to David Bouchard meeting his ex-wife as she walks into his residence and the greetings are followed by acknowledging the breasts of his ex. A stand-up comedian from Quebec known as Louis Jose Houde is assigned a minor role in the movie where he plays Jeff’s part as a coroner who offers the details of the causes of the first victim’s death. Jeff uses a quarrelsome monologue which is normal to him as a type of humor that is swift and verbal as he delivers his finding(Marshall 48). Ward is able to understand at least a half of the verbal logorrhea partially delivered in form of joual although he is reassured to hear that even Bouchard understood half of the conversation which hopefully was not similar in any way.

 While Jeff is updating the officers on autopsy concerning Rita, he talks about the name being spelled from backward as atir which seems to be the present tense of the word attract although it also sounds like a pronunciation in joual of Elle tire. Bouchard’s unpredictable driving refers to an outstanding Canadian jokes reference which talks about the risks of driving along Montreal and Quebec drivers at large. The movie also exhibits an equal opportunity parody whereby when the two officers reach the heliport, the divisions of both the English and French language jurisdiction by Ward together with the formal language used are an allusion to the constitution of Canada which contains the official language stipulations(HALLAM 53).  The characters of both Harry Buttman, the national hockey league commissioner and Gary Bettman who owners a team in the league are parodies of Marcel Aubut together with Peter Pocklington correspondingly.

Work Cited

Canuel, Érik. Bon cop, bad cop. Alliance Atlantic Vivafilm, 2006.

Fuchs, Michael, editor. Placing America: American Culture and Its Spaces. Transcript, 2013.

Hallam, Julia. Locating the Moving Image New Approaches to Film and Place. Indiana University Press, 2013.

Marshall, P. David. Celebrity Cultures in Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.