Cine Excess Reviews: LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN

By Ed Whitfield / July 6, 2011

rating: 2

Why were Ruggero Deodato€™s movies so popular in Germany? That, my friends, is what we in the critical fraternity, call a question. One answer I invite you to consider is €˜the safe consumption of fascist principles€™. After all, those Italians invented it didn€™t they, but it€™s the Germans that really stretched its dehumanising potential. Audiences, whether they know it or not, are primed for ideological interpolation; we€™re receivers of ideas, and sometimes we may act on them. Such notions keep the BBFC awake at night. Movies are also fantasies however, and one of the reasons they work is because they speak to a repressed part of their audience, who deep down, would quite like to be liberated from oppressive sanctions like the rule of law, respect for the opposite sex and being accountable to an employer/girlfriend/family. This is the spine of the buddy-cop movie, because it€™s in these films that typically we see two men doing whatever the fuck they like, in a bid to bring a villain to justice. The ends usually justify the means. Identifying with Deodato€™s cops however, is more difficult, because they aren€™t heroes. In fact, the film, which typically for the director, is highly political, attacks the Italian police as a highly corrupt and self-serving organisation, serving a somewhat barbarous and degenerate populous. There€™s little to separate the cops and the criminals, while the women, in a forerunner of what€™s become known as The Berlusconi Paradigm, are submissive, sexually precocious bimbos, with an unquenchable thirst for ejaculate. The one woman in the picture who doesn€™t fit the mould, the opinionated secretary, is only inclined to resist the cops€™ advances because her head is full of feminist rhetoric, which, and never let it be said that Deodato doesn€™t have a great sense of humour, is delivered in sultry soft focus. The clunkiness of that exchange, the subtleties and nuances of which may have been lost in translation, begs a question; why is there is no great dialogue in foreign language movies? Ah, you say, this is a b-movie, it was never going to sing, but reading sentence after sentence that€™s as blunt and functional as the action, it does make you wonder. Think about it, can you name five great foreign language films with dialogue that€™s etched into your memory? Can you name three? Perhaps there€™s something about the flexibility and rhythm of English that lends itself to cutting rebukes and great one liners. Maybe that€™s why Conrad chose to write in English. Such philosophical questions aside, Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man is at its best in its first half, in which Deodato maintains a pace and flair that€™s missing from the slower, meandering second. The opening assault, again on a poor woman, leading us to suspect that Deodato€™s a gentleman in real life, using his movies as a receptacle for any latent misogyny, is genuinely shocking, but the motorcycle chase that follows demonstrates the director€™s zeal, and there€™s a regret that it isn€™t maintained throughout. Amongst the social commentary, €˜police with faces like thieves€™ and the shoot outs to sub-Dylan peace anthems, which is the closest the movie comes to being deliberately funny, there€™s pleasure to be had in the cranberry coloured blood with the consistency of paint, which circulating around the body would condemn most to an early grave, and the banter, which though rough, does evoke The Bullshitters of Comic Strip fame. It€™s an ugly movie, mired in bad technique, but fun for all you post-modernists€ if you're in the mood. Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man played at this year€™s Cine Excess Film Festival