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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0024543131021
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 01, 2005
Running Time: 112 minutes
Sales Rank: 16476
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1973
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Editorial Review:
Description:
A san francsico detective and his new partner search for the man responsible for slaughtering the passengers on a city bus.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Death by the Busload
Gritty naturalism and Altman-esque crosstalk amid great Bay City location work inform this 70s procedural that entertains but misses the mark of being a classic. The picture's overlong with a few too many red herrings. Things pick up for the climax. (Indeed, the ingenious plot could be due for a remake.)
Matthau is suitably low-key in the picture's admirably unsparing picture of the cop's home life. Lou and Bruce are along to jack up the energy.
Rating:  - A solid San Francisco police procedural in the "Bullitt"-mode
In the 1960s the writing team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo wrote police procedural mysteries based on the cops of the Stockholm PD--a sort of Swedish 87th Precinct series without a vestige of wit or humor, hence the ironic title. Oh, very gloomily Scandinavian! The books were immensely successful in Europe and even managed the almost unprecedented feat of jumping the Atlantic to become best sellers in America. "The Laughing Policeman" was probably the best-known book of the lot. It is still very much in print and well worth reading today.
Inevitably the series was picked up on option by an American film studio. In 1973, "The Laughing Policeman" was filmed ... with a few changes.
Ingmar Bergman may have been widely admired but he was not box office. No US studio was going to risk big bucks on unknown Swedish actors, nossiree. Walter Matthau was hired to play the lead detective and a young Bruce Dern to play his sidekick. (It should be remembered that in those days Matthau was still an all-around actor, and a good one; his talent had not yet disappeared beneath his comic persona.) If no Swedish actors, than certainly not Stockholm, a town that was presumably gloomy and dull. (Who knew? Who cared?) San Francisco was neither. That was the place!
The movie starts out with a wordless sequence which begins at what was then called the Eastbay Terminal located at about First and Mission Streets. A miscellaneous lot of people board a small diesel bus ... Read More
Rating: - Eight People Know Who The Killer Is - And They're All Dead
Sgt. Jake Martin is speaking to his new partner, Insp. Leo Larsen; trying to convince him how important this investigation is. Inspector Leo Larsen is leery:
"Sgt. Jake Martin SFPD: Evans was working the Teresa thing on his own time. He's killed on the same bus with Gus Niles who's looking for a grease gun that happens to be the weapon used.
Insp. Leo Larsen SFPD: And then his girlfriend winds up dead on the floor with the needle... Jake, you realize what you just did? You do it to me all the time, now you heard what the man said upstairs.
Sgt. Jake Martin SFPD: I heard him, I was up there, he's a nice man, he shoots in the low 80s, but he plays too close to the vest.
Insp. Leo Larsen SFPD: Then what are you laying all that crap on ME FOR? WHY DON'T YOU STOP IT FOR ONCE? That's YOUR personal hang-up, it does NOT happen to be mine!
Sgt. Jake Martin SFPD: Can't you see it?
Insp. Leo Larsen SFPD: I see one thing, I see why you're such a good cop, and one reason only, because you're so screwed up otherwise. You're beyond human belief, you understand that? You've got nothing else, no personal life, nothing!
Sgt. Jake Martin SFPD: All I'm asking you to do is help me tail a guy for a few days, its routine!
Insp. Leo Larsen SFPD: IT IS NOT ROUTINE JAKE, GODDAMMIT, IF THE BOSS SAYS FORGET IT!"
Nine people in San Francisco get on a bus, one leaves alive. The
living one takes with ... Read More
Rating: - Interesting Police Procedural, Very Much Of Its Time
Two men get on a bus in early morning San Francisco. It's still dark out. One seems to be following the other, and the first man appears to be aware of it but isn't concerned. There are five other passengers, among them an old man, a young woman going to work, a Chinese-American kid. The bus picks up another passenger. This man goes to the back of the bus, and while he's seated he quietly reaches into a bag and screws on a barrel to a machine gun. Then he stands and murders everyone on the bus. The bus crashes and he walks away. This is a taut, terrific opening to a police procedural that I wish I liked more than I do.
It turns out that the man on the bus who had been following the other is a policeman. Among the cops called to the scene is Jake Martin (Walter Matthau), who was the guy's partner. Martin is shocked at the discovery. He has no idea what his partner had been doing. With a massacre on his hands, the lieutenant in charge (Anthony Zerbe) tells Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern) to work with Jake. He makes it clear he wants all stops out to find the killer. What follows is a meticulous look at dogged police work, chasing down leads, searching for connections, trying to make sense of what appears to be a senseless act. Some of those killed had crime sheets or were drug users, and this sends Martin and Larsen into San Francisco's underbelly. Finally Martin realizes that there might be a connection to a two-year-old case that he had talked to his former partner about, a connection that may ... Read More
Rating: - Matthau and Dern at their best
There is absolutely nothing funny about "The Laughing Policeman", director Stuart Rosenberg's ultra-serious, ultra-violent police procedural/character study from 1974. Actually, that it's a hard-boiled police thriller is apparent five minutes in, when a lone gunman machine guns an entire city bus full of passengers to death and disappears into thin air. Enter foul-tempered homicide detective Lt. Jake Martin (Walter Matthau), whose anger intensifies when he realizes one of the victims is his off-duty partner. He's in even less of a good mood when he's paired with affable, sympathetic new partner Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern, in a rare "straight" role). The rest of the film follows their search for the killer, which leads them into some pretty unsavory places in and around San Francisco.
"The Laughing Policeman" isn't so much a police thriller as a procedural, and a very good one at that. There is very little action, and most of the tension comes from Martin and Larsen's prickly relationship. And gay viewers may be offended by where the crime ends up, as the San Francisco gay scene is shown in an extremely negative light. That said, there's something special to be found in any movie that relies on sheer acting from its lead and supporting cast, which includes Lou Gossett and Anthony Zerbe as fellow cops and Cathy Lee Crosby and Joanna Cassidy as two women who may have clues to whodunnit. And the last fifteen minutes are absolutely hair-raisingly suspenseful.
I'll say no more ... Read More
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