Un flic is a 1972 French film, the last directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It stars Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Richard Crenna. Delon had previously worked with Melville on Le Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge, playing the role of a criminal. In Un Flic Delon's role is reversed. He plays the cop, Édouard Coleman, in pursuit of Simon, a notorious Paris thief, who is very hard to pin down.
Motto
"The only feelings mankind has ever inspired in policemen are those of indifference and derision..."
Plot
Following a raid on a bank in a seaside town, four Parisian gangsters flee after a cashier sets off the alarm with only part of the loot and with one of the men, Marc Albois, wounded by the cashier, who Marc then shoots dead. They put Marc in a private clinic and disperse. Their leader, Simon, owns a night club which is visited regularly by police detective Coleman to keep an eye on Simon and pick upinformation. Coleman also hopes to see the beautiful Cathy, who is Simon's mistress but spends occasional afternoons with Coleman in a hotel room. Fearing police will find and question Marc, Simon sends Cathy into the clinic dressed as a nurse to give the dying man a fatal air embolism after an attempt to take him away fails. Simon's next project is to steal a large quantity of heroin being transported out of France by a rival gang on the night express from Paris to Lisbon. From a helicopter, he is lowered onto the speeding train in the empty countryside south of Bordeaux, knocks out the courier with chloroform, and is successfully winched up with the drugs. Coleman, knowing the dead Marc was friends with Louis Costa, arrests him and gets him to confess the names of his accomplices. Coleman goes to the club and questions Simon, who denies he knows Marc or Louis. Simon immediately telephones the fourth member of the gang, Paul, a former bank manager, to warn him, but police arrive before he can flee and Paul shoots himself. Simon hides out in a hotel and rings Cathy to pick him up. However, police have tapped Cathy's phone and, as Simon emerges from the hotel carrying an attaché case full of heroin, the waiting Coleman draws a gun and challenges him. As Simon seems to be reaching inside his coat for a gun, Coleman shoots him dead while Cathy watches helplessly from her car. However, when Coleman inspects Simon's body, he finds he had no gun, leading him to think it was suicide by cop. Coleman is called away on another case, leaving a pensive Cathy alone. The film ends with a prolonged shot on Coleman's face as he drives away.
