Tonight's Movie: The Laughing Policeman (1973)

This summer Kino Lorber has been featuring a "While Supplies Last" sale of titles which are going out of print.

Naturally, I picked up a couple things in the sale (grin). One of my purchases was a Blu-ray of a new-to-me film, THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (1973).

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN stars Walter Matthau as a San Francisco police detective, Jake Martin. The movie was based on a novel by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, transferring the setting from the novel's Stockholm to Northern California.

As the movie opens a mass shooting takes place on a San Francisco bus, after which the perpetrator successfully gets away.

When Martin arrives on scene he's stunned to discover one of the victims is his partner (Jake Costello), who had been working one of Martin's cold cases on his own time.

Martin gets to work with colleagues including Larsen (Bruce Dern), Larrimore (Louis Gossett Jr.), and Steiner (Anthony Zerbe) to try to unravel the mystery. They check into the backgrounds of every person on the bus as well as revisiting Martin's old case. It eventually builds to an exciting climax on the Embarcadero.

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN is both grim and gritty, showing the dark side of San Francisco, including places like a porn theater and a strip joint.

That said, the movie also does a great job showing lesser-known areas of San Francisco, including the TransBay bus terminal. Reel SF, a favorite locations blog, has some screen caps and info on various places seen in the film.

I love a good police procedural, and I'd class this one as solid; I enjoyed the depiction of the police painstakingly working through clues, some of which go nowhere.

I also appreciated the gradually evolving relationship of Martin and Larsen. Martin is a taciturn man who despite being married with children has no family life as such; he's an outsider in his own home, clearly on the brink of divorce.

Martin doesn't have much to say and often shuts Larsen out, but they finally come to an understanding of sorts after a shouting argument in the police parking garage. Larsen appreciates Martin's smarts, and from that point they work together in a more collegial manner, taking turns staking out their prime suspect (Albert Paulsen).

I used to feel indifferent about Matthau, but the more I've seen of him in recent years, particularly in his preceding film CHARLEY VARRICK (1973), the more I appreciate him. He keeps me engaged even in lengthy nonverbal sequences. I also enjoyed his interplay with the more loquacious Dern and Gossett.

As a child of the '70s, I think my favorite thing about the movie was the details which scream the era in no uncertain terms, whether it's the loud wallpaper in Matthau's home, the myriad station wagons on the road, Matthau's alarm, or the blue and white Corningware coffee pot. (I have some of my grandmothers' pieces with the same design.) For those who remember the era, the visual tour is enough reason in itself to watch the movie.

Parental Advisory: This film fully earns its R rating in terms of language and some of the settings. I'd add that the murder victims are bloody but the film doesn't depict anything particularly gruesome there, which made it easier for me to watch the crime scene investigation sequence.

Kino Lorber's Blu-ray features a commentary track with a trio of participants I'm unfamiliar with; an interview with actor Paul Koslo; a trailer; and a gallery of four additional trailers for other Kino Lorber releases. The case includes reversible cover art. The Blu-ray itself looks and sounds fine.

For more on this movie I recommend Roger Ebert's 1973 review along with a review Glenn Erickson wrote regarding the Kino Lorber Blu-ray in 2016.

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