Bon Cop Bad Cop

Bon Cop Bad Cop (Director: Erik Canuel, Canada, 2006): Here’s a film that could only be made in Canada. Colm Feore and Patrick Huard play cops from Ontario and Quebec respectively who are forced to team up when a body is found draped across the border sign between the two provinces. The murder is just the first of a grisly series involving hockey and tattoos, and the pair must battle not only the killer but their language and cultural prejudices.

The hockey angle involves the league commissioner’s plan to move the Toronto franchise to Texas, and the murders are fuelled by a very Canadian sense of outrage at our national sport being sold off to bored and rich Americans looking for novelty. There are sendups of hockey commentator/buffoon Don Cherry (played by a hilarious Rick Mercer) and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman (renamed “Buttman” for the film and played by an actor of, shall we say, extremely small stature).

Canuel has made a pretty good buddy cop movie that also manages to have fun with stereotypes of both English and French Canadians, and this film actually made a decent amount of money up here, although to be fair, most of it was in Quebec, where filmgoers will actually pay to see homegrown productions like this one.

Unfortunately, the movie’s greatest strength is also its greatest handicap. The hilarious cultural references would make it completely unintelligible to anyone outside of Canada. The DVD includes three versions: an English version with subtitles for the French dialogue, a French version with subtitles for the English dialogue, and a completely unsubtitled version for those true Canadians, most of whom are living in Ottawa or Montreal.

(7/10)