Ousmane Diakité and François Monge may be French, but they will immediately look familiar to the American public: detectives mismatched by a case bicker all the time, only to begrudgingly reach a truce. They complement each other, you see.
As you might have guessed, “The Takedown” is a Gallic twist on buddy cop movies, especially those from the ’80s and ’90s. Unfortunately, much of the humor, including several moldy gay panic jokes, also belongs to that time. Imagine, our two heroes have to share a bed after a hotel runs out of rooms – the horror!
A sequel to 2012’s marginally superior “On the Other Side of the Tracks”, “The Takedown” finds the smart, hot-headed Ousmane (the “Lupine” star Omar Sy) and the idiotic, arrogant François (Laurent Lafitte, ” Elle”) investigating a small mountain town that is teeming with white supremacists who hopped on potent meth — and the local authorities, belonging to a far-right party similar to Marine Le Pen’s, are more tolerating than tolerating them. A local policewoman (Izïa Higelin) seems happy to help our strange couple.
The project must have felt like a gimme for both Sy, whose easygoing charm helped make “Lupine” a worldwide hit, and Louis Leterrier, who made his mark directing the excellent first two “Transporter” films and the best “Lupine” episodes. But even the sight of the two enemies wiping out racist crooks isn’t enough to make up for the desperately frenzied action sequences (hope you like endless chases), joyless jokes and trite clichés.
the collection
Not judged. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on Netflix.