Un Flic (A Cop) is a 1972 French crime film. It is the final film to be written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, who died the following year.
Police commissioner Edouard Coleman (Alain Delon) is hunting a gang of daring robbers led by Simon, while flirting with Simon's girlfriend Cathy (Catherine Deneuve).
Tropes in this film:
- Colour Wash: It is set in winter in France, and has a generally cool colour palette, even indoors.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: A downplayed Parisian example: instead of seeing the Eiffel Tower early on, we see the Arc de Triomphe late in the film. It's visible from Simon's hotel room.
- He Knows Too Much: One of Simon's gang is shot and wounded in a bank robbery, and is put into a private clinic for treatment. They soon realise that the police will find him. Simon and one of his henchmen disguise themselves as paramedics to "take him to another clinic," but the receptionist won't let them move the badly wounded man. So Simon's girlfriend Cathy, who is disguised as a nurse, walks into the man's room and gives him a lethal injection.
- Police Brutality: Two examples, one explicit and one implied:
- Commissioner Coleman has to deal with a team of pickpockets who claim not to speak French. He slaps one of them in the face, and his language skills improve.
- Coleman and his team arrest one of Simon's gang, who denies everything. They then lower the shutters on the windows in Coleman's office, and shine a bright light on the suspect. Cut to Coleman phoning Simon: "Do you know Louis Costa?" "No." "Well, he knows you."
- Suicide by Cop: One interpretation of the ending: Commissioner Coleman draws his gun and tells Simon to surrender. Simon reaches into his coat, and Coleman fires. Simon is found to be unarmed.
- Symbolic Distance: At the end of the movie Edouard and Cathy accidentally meet each other on a street, standing on the opposite sides of it. They exchange a look and silently go separate ways, they know they cannot be together anymore after they find out some harsh truths about each other.
- Train Job: Simon's gang rob a courier for a rival gang on a train ... by lowering their leader onto the train from a helicopter, at night. The Unspoken Plan Guarantee is in full effect.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: There are two unspoken plans, one goes better than the other.
- The film starts with a vanilla bank robbery, which starts going wrong when the teller hits the alarm.
- Later, The robbers talk vaguely about a Train Job. This turns out to involve their leader being lowered onto a speeding train from a helicopter at night, and goes perfectly.
