My New Partner

My New Partner (Les Ripoux, 1984) — watch online this French comedy from director Claude Zidi on iFILM. Veteran Paris cop René, played by Philippe Noiret, has spent years running a quiet racket: pocket money from the small-time criminals on his beat, a blind eye to what he prefers not to see, and a comfortable life built on low-grade corruption. Then the precinct assigns him a partner.

François — Thierry Lermitte — arrives fresh from the academy, rulebook in hand, visibly horrified by everything René does. René sets about undoing that. The twist is that François turns out to be a faster learner than expected: he picks up the graft so efficiently that he starts outperforming the man who taught him.

A major box-office hit in France in 1984, it went on to generate two sequels. Noiret plays René not as a villain but as someone with his own workable logic — the comedy comes from the gap between what René calls pragmatism and what everyone else would call theft. Stream My New Partner (1984) online on iFILM.