soullimbo No sign of the Louvres, the Champs-Elysees , the Eifel tower , the 'bateau-mouche' on the Seine , the Arc de Triomphe or any of the usual sights that one would normally associate with the city of romance in this movie. The one exception is perhaps a blurry view of Sacre- coeur in the background , albeit very briefly.Instead , we're treated with a perhaps over-realistic version of this beloved city , with an extremely 'bent' policeman (Noiret) who is given the clean country boy (Lhermitte) as a new partner. The comedy stems from Lhermitte's transformation from an " Elliot Ness" type of honesty , to eventually become more dishonest than Noiret himself. Incidentally , the term 'ripoux' stems from a french type of slang , whereby the syllables in a word are phonetically reversed , so in this instance , ripoux = pouris , which means 'rotten' or 'garbage' . A great little movie which spawned 2 sequels ( of inferior quality , but let's be honest, sequels usually are ).

mfkd-mixcoatl33 I purchased the DVD box set of Les Ripoux and Ripoux Contre Ripoux, its first sequel (there is now a third, Ripoux 3). To my horror, it only has the French language track, no English anything, to include subtitles. The had subtitles in the theater, so is it a French government plot that they cannot put them on DVD? Otherwise, I'll say that Les Ripoux is one of the best French comedies of all time, along with Grand blond avec une chaussure noire, "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe", and its sequel. Which I would also like to have if I could get subtitles for them! (For those who have seen the Tom Hanks version of the latter, while funny, I found it to be too Americanized and think the original version was better.)

writers_reign ... or, if you don't speak Pig Latin/Backslang, top drawer. Pig Latin had a vogue in the forties - and possibly earlier - and for a time it was commonplace to hear expressions like 'amscray' (scram) in low-budget Hollywood movies. If the US had Pig Latin France has 'verlan' or 'la langue de banlieues' (the language of the suburbs). Pourri, which means 'rotten' when transposed to verlan comes out ripoux, thus Le Ripoux, The Rotten. It's basically our old friend the veteran taking the rookie under his wing, in this case veteran cop, Philippe Noiret, who's also a BENT veteran cop, if anyone asks you, is lumbered with green-as-grass rookie Therry Thermitte. Believe me, it's a match made in Heaven. Not a lot happens but the trick is, IT HAPPENS IN FRENCH and that gallic flavor makes all the difference. It was so good that six years later they made a sequel, and last year they made a sequel to the sequel. Hooray. 9/10

Tony James Came across this film years ago, the french teacher at school put the video to keep us quiet; thought it was brilliant then. Caught it by accident the other night on cable - its got better with age!! The characters are superbly drawn and believable, the plot just bizarre enough to work. Which begs the question, why isn't it available on DVD? Or if it is, where?