Scoop & Un flic

Scoop is, unfortunately, even with Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane (as a non-cursing ghost), Hugh Jackman, Charles Dance, and even a very brief cameo from Anthony Stewart Head, completely torpedoed by Woody Allen. And his script. Allen's capable of so much more, as evidenced by Match Point, but his comedies have been fairly bad for years. I am still looking forward to his next films, but there are times when I think that maybe the film won't be supremely disappointing. And then I watched Scoop. Awkward and unfunny "comedy", wasting of most of the cast, and just far too much Woody.

Un Flic is Jean-Pierre Melville's last film, and the fourth I've seen. All of them are completely awesome. From the proto-French New Wave of Bob le Flambeur, one of the coolest films ever made, to Le Samouraï, the main influence for John Woo's The Killer, to Le Cercle Rouge, one of the best heist films (after Rififi). Un Flic is translated as A Cop. The Netflix page is titled Un Flic, and the last line of the description is "Original French title: Un Flic." What the hell, Netflix? Admittedly, I never actually realized that flic was cop, not a film. Man, my French is tres terrible. The film itself is another heist film, starting with a bank heist and then a train heist that's so obviously a model train that it's funny. There's also quite a few obvious backdrops, let alone the rear-projected backgrounds for the car scenes. But that doesn't matter when you have Richard Crenna as a smooth thief/nightclub owner fighting with Alain Delon, as the titular cop, over Catherine Deneuve, one of the most beautiful women ever. Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve in the same scene is quite a bit of hotness. The filming of the bank heist is also quite impressive with the rain and the fog. Sure the film isn't really saying very much, except that possibly Delon may be a little too married to his job and that's what makes for a good cop, but that doesn't entirely mean much.