AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

romanorum1 A short and pudgy man, aware that he is being tailed, makes a telephone call at the San Francisco bus terminal late at night. He and about seven others board a bus just before its departure. The fat man's eyes are on a tall, dark-haired fellow. The latter, despite all of the empty seats, sits next to an attractive nurse. An auto speeds past the moving bus and comes to a stop at the next bus stop. Wearing a brown trench coat and carrying a piece of luggage, the car driver boards the bus just in time. We do not see his face. There seems to be a slight acknowledgment from Fatman as Trench Coat walks past him to the rear of the bus. After he sits down Trench Coat dons on a pair of black gloves, zippering them up. From his luggage he removes and assembles a submachine gun ("a greaser"). As he stands up and aims his weapon, Fatman gets up and exclaims, "Not yet!" Ignoring him, Trench Coat fires away at all of the passengers, including Fatman, and the bus driver, killing them all except one, who will die shortly after. The bus crashes to a stop in Chinatown. Trench Coat exits the vehicle calmly and escapes.The police eventually arrive; SFPD Sgt. Jake Martin (Walter Mathau) is shocked when he discovers the body of the tall, dark-haired fellow. That was his partner Detective Dave Evans. But he was supposed to be on leave, unless he was on a special assignment. But was he? Fatman on the bus was Gus Niles. What was his relation to the killer? Why was Evans being set up? What about the other victims? We recognize that will be in a film that mostly deals with police work in tracking down each of the murdered passengers in order to find clues. Although many of the passengers have sordid pasts, most of the police work will lead to dead ends. Along the way we see emphasis placed on the hospital emergency room treatment of the wounded. Also, we will see a swat team in action and see what happens when street people are shaken up by the cops. Whether Haight/Ashbury or Laguna Street or Chinatown or the ghetto, the neighborhoods will tell us something about the people and their lifestyles. There will be prostitutes, petty criminals, hippies, and motorcycle gangs.Main leads include Insp. Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern) and Insp. James Larrimore (Louis Gossett Jr.). Larsen will be Martin's new partner. Martin has made it perfectly clear early on that he has little use for Larsen. And the feeling is mutual. There will even be some tension between Larsen and Larrimore. The latter will disappear from the movie with three-quarters of an hour left. Despite lack of support from their immediate superior, Martin and Larsen will have to unravel it all out and confront the bad guy. The climax almost seems unnecessary, although Martin did say that the police have to spook him out. But were the killer's last actions really obligatory? See the movie and find out. Positives are good acting and nice on-location shooting!

MrSubway1 Yes this is a slow moving police investigation. After the initial massacre on a SF city bus, that does a great job of pulling the audience in, the action slows considerably.The initial crime scene investigation is both authentic and pathetic. It is a glaring example of poor techniques that were employed by all police departments as recently as the 1980's. In this movie all the detectives were traipsing through the crime scene, smoking cigarettes and touching everything in sight.Though the autopsy scene is long and the actors playing the corpses couldn't quite stay still, the actual autopsy was painfully authentic. Also authentic was the medical care given to the only living bus passenger. This was way before ET and ER and dare I say probably influenced both.The characters and the themes the detectives deal with mirror the change and turmoil that defined the 1970's. The seedy city that has been romanticized recently is well represented in this film: promiscuous gays, pimps and prostitutes, kinky sex all out in the public.Those things are the real strengths of the film. The murderer himself is a let down as is investigation that leads to him. A rich man kills a detective to prevent that detective from fingering him as the murderer of the rich man's wife. He kills everybody on the bus as cover. Oh please. If he is that ruthless and smart to do that, than he is not going to hold onto the gun, or get spooked by some detective who shows up with an old photo. The climactic scene on the bus, when the killer gets shot while trying to wipe out another detective on another city bus is so contrived as to be laughable (perhaps how they came up with the tile).Overall, enjoyable as a period piece and character study.

trudylyn Police procedurals have always been a staple of fiction, film and TV in the US and Europe. There are many stand outs in the genre and this isn't one of them. Having said that, I will say that this movie is full of surprises and interesting directing and cinematography. The technical assistance provided by the San Francisco police department seems to have been tremendous, particularly in the scenes demonstrating evidence collection and the then-unfamiliar SWAT team. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of the stunts and extra work were performed by serving officers. The original novel took place in Sweden and only two items in the film reference that origin, one submachine gun and one Volvo. The title refers to an antique novelty record that has a bit part in the novel but doesn't appear anywhere in the movie, unless it was included in the Muzak that Matthau's detective seems addicted to throughout the movie. Predating Kojak by a few months, Matthau's character is chewing gum and sucking on suckers throughout the movie in an attempt to keep from smoking. He almost gives in at one point, but tosses the pack back on the table in the den. This movie is significant in that it features sex throughout. Prostitutes, live nude performers, gay go-go boys, rough trade and cross-dressers and a token lesbian in knee-length clown socks and sandals who works as a nurse and lost her partner to the crime, just as Matthau's partner died. His dead partner also used his girlfriend to enact murderous bondage scenes which he photographed as part of his crime fetish. Matthau's character apparently has a sexless marriage while his daughter is wandering around braless in thin sweaters and his son is hanging around with the sticky raincoat crowd in a nudie "burlesque" theater. One of the victims in the film is found dead in her apartment sans clothing and Dern's character trips and almost does a push up off her body, her face just inches from his. Matthau's character wanders through it all, chewing gum and viewing it all almost impassively, with only a few moments of verbal indignation and frustration. The scenery is magnificent and cars alone are worth the price of admission. The fashions are irritating, as they were at the time and it is simply amazing how few people use seat belts. The plot is thin, and the denouement is silly, but in the end you could do worse for a couple of hours.

sol (Some Spoilers) Parking his car just before the #14 bus reached the bus stop the killer calmly walks in takes a seat and assembles his semi-automatic "grease gun". Then without saying a word opens fire on the passengers and bus driver killing all but one of them, an elderly survivor later died at the hospital, on the spot as the bus crashed into a small Chinatown park. On the scene of the massacre is SFPD Let. Jake Martin, Walter Matthau, who after inspecting the victims of the "Death Bus" is shocked to find that one of them is Det. Dave Evens, Anthony Costello, is his partner! What was Evens doing on that bus? Going to see his live-in girlfriend Kay Butler, Cathy Lee Crosby, Let. Martin finds that Evens who was out sick for the entire week. Telling her that he was on the Teresa Camerero case a case that was adjudicated almost two years ago? Teresa was murdered and her husband Henry, Albert Paulsen, who was tried for her murder but was found innocent in a court of law. What's even more ironic is that the star witness who got Henry off with the alibi that he was with him at the time of Teresa's murder was Gus Niles, Louis Guss! Who just happened to be one of those who were killed like Evens on bus #14! Let. Martin and his new partner SFPD inspector Leo Larsen, Bruce Dern, are put on the "Death Bus" case and they painstakingly tie the Teresa Camerero murder to it. Not only that but that Det. Evens had a very personal relationship with Teresa and was on his own, without the go ahead from his police superiors, out to solve her murder and it was that very reason that lead to his death.Slow moving but effective police/crime/drama with Let. Martin and Inspector Larsen as the oddest of odd partners with Martin not saying a word unless he absolutely has to. and Larsen never keeping his mouth shut for even a second. Going through the sleazy sex parlors and seedy bars nightclubs of San Francisco the two track down the killer but are unable to arrest him until he breaks the law again. It turned that the killer was acting in concert with Niles to get Evens on the bus in order to murder him. We even see Niles acknowledged the killer as he entered the bus. What did happen was that Niles was double-crossed by the killer as he opened fire on everyone on board including him. Thus having Niles not around to finger him in case he later wanted to make a deal with the police in order to save his neck from ending up in the San Quinten gas chamber. The ending of "The Laughing Policeman" is a bit overdone with a totally unnecessary car chase sequence as well as a repeat of the bus massacre that began the film. But this time around it was the killer, not the innocent passengers and bus driver, who got massacred.