No sign of the Louvres, the Champs-Elysees , the Eifel tower , the 'bateau-mouche' on the Seine , the Arc de Triomphe or any of the usual sights that one would normally associate with the city of romance in this movie. The one exception is perhaps a blurry view of Sacre- coeur in the background , albeit very briefly.

Instead , we're treated with a perhaps over-realistic version of this beloved city , with an extremely 'bent' policeman (Noiret) who is given the clean country boy (Lhermitte) as a new partner. The comedy stems from Lhermitte's transformation from an " Elliot Ness" type of honesty , to eventually become more dishonest than Noiret himself.

Incidentally , the term 'ripoux' stems from a french type of slang , whereby the syllables in a word are phonetically reversed , so in this instance , ripoux = pouris , which means 'rotten' or 'garbage' .

A great little movie which spawned 2 sequels ( of inferior quality , but let's be honest, sequels usually are ).

What a great movie! All around good fun -- I'd recommend it to anyone. The lead actors were awesome -- does anyone else think the guy playing Francois looks like a French Baldwin brother? Anyways, the story of two crooked cops hasn't aged at all. Hard to believe this one's not on VHS or DVD yet. See it if you can.