Bon Cop Bad Cop 2

It’s a second round of bilingual buddy cop comedy in Bon Cop Bad Cop 2. Now working for the RCMP, Martin Ward (Colm Feore) conducts a raid on a car theft operation in Montreal, only to find his old partner David Bouchard (Patrick Huard) working undercover. The two work together to bring down the car theft ring, organized by Sylvio Dipietro (Noam Jenkins), but they soon find that there are much greater stakes to this operation.

Released in the summer of 2006, Bon Cop Bad Cop was probably most notable for being the film that broke the 24 year old record held by Porky‘s as the highest grossing Canadian film of all time. Presumably this was because Bon Cop Bad Cop was a film that appealed to both the English Canada and Quebecois markets, with its plot of an Ontario Provincial Police detective reluctantly teaming with a detective from the Sûreté du Québec to solve a murder on the Ontario-Quebec border.

It is now eleven years later and Martin Ward and David Bouchard find themselves partnered up again, this time with much grayer hair. With Ward now a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he takes control of David’s yearlong sting operation, where he has intercepted a car theft ring. However, the two soon begin to realize that this car theft ring is a front for a much larger terrorist plot, with connections to the United States.

While a rarity in Canada, Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 is a textbook example of a sequel being made to cash in on the previous film’s success. It is almost never a good idea to follow-up a film after more than a decade, particularly when it’s a film that didn’t really need a follow-up. One of the key elements of Bon Cop Bad Cop was the differences between English and French Canada, which is all but swept aside in the sequel. In its place is a mockery of Canada’s relationship with the United States, particularly an awkward scene where David is being interrogated in a rural U.S. police station and the officers express their confusion at the concept of French-Canadians, with one even suggesting that David is actually Swedish (like the chef on The Muppets).

While Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 is ultimately an unnecessary sequel, the film is still fine for what it is. I don’t think this film will break any box office records, but fans of the original should like it.