THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN entered the crime scene as one of three dozen 1973 movies that dealt with cops or crooks in fashions ranging from lighthearted to brutal, nostalgic to exploitative. This one, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, strived for a a gritty style realism ala Serpico (same year), was set in San Francisco like Magnum Force (same year) and stars Walter Matthau, also on tap as a crook in one of the year’s best outlaw rides, Charley Varrick. Here he’s a policeman, but smiling is infrequent, as he’s another one of those cops with a deadened home life, stuck with a new partner he doesn’t like (Bruce Dern) and a supervising lieutenant (Anthony Zerbe) who yells at everyone even when they’re just a foot away from him.

After someone machine gun massacres nine people on a city bus, homicide detective ‘Jake Martin’ (Matthau) is more dismayed than usual to find his off-duty partner was one of those murdered. Forced to accept cocky ‘Leo Larsen’ (Dern) as his new wingman, Martin manages his obvious dislike of Larsen as they join the manhunt. There’s not a lot of laughing during the course of the case, which includes partaking in a full-scale apartment shootout with another unrelated killer who takes out his mom or dad issues on all within velocity range.

The script by Thomas Rickman (W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, Coal Miner’s Daughter) was adapted from an award-winning 240-page Swedish novel written in 1968 by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö. After the great Cool Hand Luke and pleasant The April Fools, Rosenberg steered three duds in a row (Move, WUSA and Pocket Money), so he recovered some mojo with this pretty good meller, and stocks the supporting cast with reliable backup men: Louis Gossett Jr., Val Avery, Paul Koslo, Gregory Sierra, Clifton James and Matt Clark. Effective in small roles are Cathy Lee Crosby, 28, and Joanna Cassidy, 27, both relatively new to the game, who, to Rosenberg’s credit, aren’t there to have their beauty exploited in gratuitous nude scenes (Prime Cut, To Live And Die In L.A., countless others) but to demonstrate their skill and advance the plot, their obvious allure a given, boosted by brains beneath the beauty.

It is a neat showcase for Dern, another solid after The Cowboys and Silent Running, but both of Matthau’s other period crimecapades—Charley Varrick and The Taking Of Pelham 123 made three in a row—eat it for lunch. True, an engaging show with good use of Bay Area locales, bracing violence and a battery of can’t lose actors, but as for the “street realism” so many reviewers cite for this (or showier nonsense like To Live And Die In L.A.), ask a cop what they think of this sort of jive and you’ll find a policeman, laughing.

A weak score from Charles Fox feels like an afterthought. The $2,000,000 patrol thru the bullet-riddled (per the movies) streets of San Francisco grossed $5,300,000, placing 60th in the copious ’73 lineup.  112 minutes, with Mario Bello, Albert Paulsen, Warren Finnerty, Leigh French, Carl Franklin and Sacheen Littlefeather (i.e. Maria Cruz, Brando’s pretend Native American mouthpiece).