Cop’s Honour [Parole de Flic] *** (1985, Alain Delon, Jacques Perrin, Fiona Gélin) – Classic Movie Review 11,193

The tense and robust 1985 French action crime thriller film Cop’s Honour [Parole de Flic] is produced by and stars Alain Delon in his welcome return to crime films after more personal dramatic films.

French film director José Pinheiro’s tense and robust 1985 French action crime thriller film Cop’s Honour [Parole de Flic] is produced by and stars Alain Delon in his welcome return to crime films after some more personal dramatic films.

However, these dramatic films include Bertrand Blier’s Notre Histoire (1984) and Swann in Love (1984), in which Delon does some of her best work. He won the Best Actor César Award for Notre Histoire (1984), and impressed as the aristocratic dandy Baron de Charlus in a film adaptation of Marcel Proust’s novel Swann in Love. Delon was a proper actor, and a good one, and didn’t have to stick to action movies. But he had a taste for money, fame and popularity, and had already walked away from an art movie career in the Sixties.

In Cop’s Honour [Parole de Flic], Delon plays retired police officer Daniel Pratt living on an African island, who learns that his teenage daughter has been murdered in Lyons by a vigilante gang of hooded men and returns to France to find the killers and avenge her, killing the killers one by one.

A number of hands were at work on the screenplay, inevitably including those of the producer/star. The original screenplay by Philippe Setbon was first turned into the film’s script by Frédéric H Fajardie, which was then edited into the final screenplay by Pinheiro and Delon.

It is shot in and around Lyons and in the People’s Republic of Congo for the African scenes.

It was a big success in France, and a sequel followed: Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (1988).

It was released in France on 21 August 1985 and in the UK in 1987 as Cop’s Honour.

The cast are Alain Delon as Daniel Pratt, Jacques Perrin as Stéphane Reiner, Fiona Gélin as Sabine Clément, Éva Darlan as Dominique Reiner, Jean-François Stévenin as Sylvain Dubor, Stéphane Ferrara as Abel Salem, Vincent Lindon as Dax, Dominique Valera as Brice, and Jean-Yves Chatelais as Remy.

Alain Delon and Phyllis Nelson sing ‘I Don’t Know’ over the closing credits.

French national boxing champion and actor Stéphane Ferrara (born 25 December 1956), who has been in more than 60 films since 1982, had just appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s Détective (1985).

Parole de flic is directed by José Pinheiro, runs 98 minutes, is made by Adel, is written by Philippe Setbon, Frédéric H Fajardie, Alain Delon (screenplay) and José Pinheiro (screenplay), is shot by Richard Andry and Jean-Jacques Tarbès, is produced by Alain Delon, and is scored by Pino Marchese.

Release date: 21 August 1985.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,193

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