Bon Cop, Bad Cop

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Bon Cop, Bad Cop

Directed by	Eric Canuel
Produced by	Kevin Tierney
Written by	Leila Basen Alex Epstein Patrick Huard Kevin Tierney
Starring	Colm Feore Patrick Huard
Distributed by	Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm
Release date(s)	4 August 2006 (Québec) 18 August 2006 (English Canada)
Running time	116 min.
Country	Canada
Language	English/French
Budget	CAD 8 000 000
IMDb profile

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a 2006 Canadian comedy buddy cop film about English Canadian and French Canadian policemen who are forced to join forces. The dialogue is in both English and French. The title is a translation word play on the phrase "Good cop/Bad cop", and its tagline is "Shoot First, Translate Later".

1 Plot
2 Awards and recognition
3 Bilingualism
4 Quebec Humour
5 Box office success
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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When a dead body is found straddling the Ontario-Quebec border, police officers from both Canadian provinces must join forces to solve the murder. David Bouchard (Patrick Huard) is a rule-bending, francophone detective for the Sûreté du Québec, while Martin Ward (Colm Feore) is a by-the-book anglophone OPP detective. Although both detectives are bilingual, they must resolve their professional and cultural differences as well as their bigotry and prejudices.

[edit] Awards and recognition

Wikinews has news related to:

Canada's best films of 2006 honoured at Genie Awards

The film won in two of its ten nominated categories for the 27th Genie Awards in 2007:

Best motion picture
Overall sound

Its other nominated categories were:

Best actor (shared): Colm Feore
Best actor (shared): Patrick Huard
Direction: Eric Canuel
Art Direction/Production Design: Jean Bécotte
Cinematography: Bruce Chun
Editing: Jean-François Bergeron
Sound editing
Original song:"Tattoo"

[edit] Bilingualism

Bon Cop, Bad Cop claims to be Canada's first bilingual feature film. Since the film revolves around the concept of mixed cultures and languages, most scenes include a mixture of French and English dialogue, with characters switching language rapidly. The entire movie was filmed using both a French and an English script, and the language used at each moment was only finalized later during editing.^[1] The end result is an alternating language tug-of-war between the two bilingual protagonists. Nevertheless, the movie was released in two official versions, one in English and one in French, which differ only in their subtitles and in a few spoken lines. The DVD also includes the option for bilingual viewers to switch off all subtitles.

[edit] Quebec Humour

There are several jokes in the film that are unlikely to be understood by non-Quebecers.

When Jeff is updating the cops on Rita's autopsy, he mentions that Rita spelled backwards is "atir." This sounds like "à tire", Québec slang for "elle tire", which means that she is promiscuous.
Rick Mercer has a minor supporting role in the film as Tom Berry, a loudmouthed television sportscaster, who is a parody of real-life Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry.
Similarly, the character of Harry Buttman is a parody of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
When Luc Therrien, played by Sylvain Marcel, puts on the mascot outfit in the washroom, he poses in front of a mirror and utters the line "Are you talkin' to me?", a parody of a similar scene in Taxi Driver. However, he also says "Ah-ha!", a reference to Marcel's tagline in the popular commercials for the Familiprix chain of drugstores.
The first few scenes with Ward are plays on stereotypes of English Canadians in general (and Torontonians in particular) as being boring or uncool. Examples include Ward ironing his pants in his kitchen while otherwise formally dressed for work, and his desire to work at a desk job.
The line "Vive le Québec Libre" uttered during the sex scene between David and Iris is an allusion to an encouragement to Quebec sovereigntists made by French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967.
Bouchard's erratic driving is a reference to long-standing Canadian jokes about the dangers of driving in Montreal, and of Quebec drivers in general.
When Ward and Bouchard arrive at the heliport, Ward's division of French-English language jurisdictions ("...with the possible exception of some areas in New Brunswick") and the formal language he uses in doing so are both allusions to the Canadian Constitution and its official language provisions.

[edit] Box office success

The film opened in Quebec on 4 August, 2006 (and Canada-wide on August 18) and, as of December 17, 2006, had grossed $12,665,721 USD (14,774,387 CAD), making it one of the highest-grossing Canadian films of all time domestically. While the film has only generated $1.3 million outside of Quebec,^[2] its success is significant given the difficulties that Canadian films normally face at the box office.

In October 2006, Bon Cop, Bad Cop's producers claimed that the film had become the highest-grossing Canadian film domestically, surpassing the $11.2 million teen comedy Porky's earned in Canada in 1981. The claim, however, does not take into consideration inflation: Porky's domestic gross in 2006 dollars is approximately $24.2 million, still far ahead of Bon Cop, Bad Cop; the latter is thus likely the third highest-grossing Canadian film domestically after Porky's and 1970's Deux femmes en or.^{[citation needed]}

The film was released on DVD on December 19, 2006.