The Takedown (originally titled Loin du Périph) is a 2022 French action comedy film directed by Louis Leterrier. It is the sequel to the 2012 film On the Other Side of the Tracks.
Police officers Ousmane Diakité (Omar Sy) and François Monge (Laurent Lafitte) reunite after ten years for a new investigation in the French Alps.
It was released on Netflix on May 6, 2022.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- Angry White Man: Played for Laughs with François, who complains that it isn't easy being a well-educated white man with a financially comfortable background. Played for Drama with the Sons of Clovis.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Ousmane seems to have achieved his current position as national head of criminal investigations due to his being The Ace when it comes to police work.
- Big Bad: Brunner, the xenophobic populist running for mayor of the Alpine town that Ousmane and François are sent to.
- Casanova Wannabe: François. While he does manage to sleep with a fair number of women, his obnoxious personality is a huge turn-off for many more, not that he realizes it.
- Chase Scene: A number of them, most notably one on a winding alpine road which ends with the baddies' car plunging off a cliff, with them inside it, and exploding on impact with the ground.
- The City vs. the Country: The first film deals with the Culture Clash between the refined Parisian cop François and the hardscrabble banlieue-based detective Ousmane. The Takedown, on the other hand, sends them to the provinces, where they are both Fish out of Water.
- Cowboy Cop: Ousmane, particularly in the original film, in which he shows little regard for official protocols and successfully blags his way onto François' investigation despite the other officer wanting nothing to do with him.
- This dynamic gets reversed in the sequel, as Ousmane is now the star officer with a high-level position while François is confined to a desk job (and, because he's a Jerkass, all of his co-workers hate him).
- Double Agent: Alice Gauthier, the local detective charged with helping Ousmane and François, turns out to be in cahoots with Brunner.
- Final Solution: Brunner and the Sons of Clovis plan to blow up the local migrant shelter.
- Large Ham: Ousmane.
- Minority Police Officer: Ousmane, and his Ambiguously Brown co-worker Yasmine in the original film (who gets a cameo in the sequel).
- Ms. Fanservice: Brunner's wife is seen naked while showering.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Sons of Clovis, a far-right ethnonationalist group that wants to rid France of its immigrant population.
- Nepotism: In the original film, this is how François expects to be promoted to commissioner.
- Noble Bigot with a Badge: François is regularly insensitive towards minorities and women, but he's as appalled as Ousmane by the actions of Brunner and the Sons of Clovis.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Brunner shares many similarities with the controversial French political figure Éric Zemmour.
- Off with His Head!: During the film's climatic scene, one of the Sons of Clovis manages to jump onto Ousmane and François' truck as they're driving out of a warehouse. Before he can shoot them, he gets decapitated as they drive underneath a metal pipe.
- Profanity Police: Ousmane is this with his son Yves.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ousmane is the red to François' blue. Fittingly, François was inspired to become a police officer after watching Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le Professionnel, while Ousmane preferred Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The Sons of Clovis.
- Romantic False Lead: Alice for Ousmane, after she turns out to be in cahoots with Brunner and his men.
- Scary Black Man: Ousmane has no trouble acting like this when he feels he needs to.
- Scenery Porn: The bulk of the movie takes place in the French Alps.
- Sour Prudes: For all his bravado and charm, Ousmane is scandalized quite easily. In particular he seems to have a major problem with nudity, as evidenced by his reaction to being in a strip club as well as his horror when François starts taking off his boxers when they're forced to sleep in the same bed. (This may be in part because Omar Sy is, by his own admission, very uncomfortable with sex scenes and has gone no further than a few shirtless appearances onscreen.)
- Standalone Episode: It's a sequel, and although there are a few Call-Backs to the original film, it can be easily watched on its own.
- Tagline: "Two reliable guys, one investigation, too much possibilities".
- Time Skip: The Takedown takes place ten years after the events of On the Other Side of the Tracks, mirroring the ten years separating the two films' releases.
- Trick Bomb: To get a couple of Brunner's goons off of their tail, François throws a smoke bomb into their car. They wind up going over a cliff because they can't see anything.
- Urban Segregation: One of the major themes in On the Other Side of the Tracks, since François polices upper-class central Paris while Ousmane's home turf is the largely non-white suburb Bobigny.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: François, an arrogant prick with zero self-awareness who is essentially the embodiment of every negative stereotype about French people.
- Viral Marketing: In-Universe, Ousmane's superiors intend to promote him as the face of the French national police, with a social media adviser even storyboarding a television spot that will have him, among other things, parachuting off of a tall building and doing Tai Chi in Luxembourg Gardens. Ousmane thinks it's ridiculous, so at the end of the movie it's François who winds up appearing in the advertisement.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: Ousmane often finds himself on the receiving end of this, but rather than being flattered, he's often annoyed or even outraged by it.
