Flic Story (BLU-RAY)

In Flic Story, based on the real-life memoir of police detective Roger Borniche, producer/star Alain Delon and his frequent collaborator, director Jacques Deray (La Piscine, Borsalino, Three Men to Kill and more), have crafted a gritty policier, a suspenseful cat-and-mouse thriller and a frank true-crime exposé. The year is 1947. When Émile Buisson, post-liberation France’s most notorious criminal (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Outside Man), escapes from a mental asylum and embarks on a bloody crime spree, Paris cop Roger Borniche (Delon, Le samouraï) gets the thankless job of either bringing him in or stopping him dead. Through rooftop pursuits, alley stakeouts, nightclub showdowns and car-to-car gun battles, Borniche, a stylish and scrupulously ethical “flic” (French slang for “cop”), is forced to break the rules he usually only bends. Driven to the edge of reason, Borniche will even risk the safety of his lover Catherine (Claudine Auger, Thunderball) to put his maniac nemesis back in a strait-jacket and on death row. Deray follows in the footsteps of master filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (Un flic) by bringing unsentimental verve, intelligent pacing and multi-layered performances to this hard-boiled classic of ’70s French film noir.