As the camera flies over the big city on the coast, it almost looks like America. When a building then explodes and a wild chase between motorcyclist and cop in a sports car ensues using lots of quick cuts, it looks exactly like America. But it‘s Reykjavik. And those of you who associate Icelandic comedies with laconic humor with depressing tendencies and strange loners will be disabused of that in COP SECRET. The film is a badass police comedy which makes fun of everything about action films and buddy comedies.

Bússi is the super cop of Reykjavik, he just has one problem: Hörður from the neighboring suburb Laugardalur is also a super cop, and so naturally he‘s competition. Bússi puts on the super masculine working-class cop act, whereas Hörður has a great physique, is rich, speaks 15 languages fluently (not Danish, out of principal) and labels himself as very fashionable and pansexual. Fate – meaning a recent series of bank robberies – forces the two of them to work together. Along with the riddle of the robberies where nothing is stolen, the excitement around the soccer game against England next Saturday and the psychopathic brutality of bad guy Rikki, Bússi becomes more and more confused by his feelings for Hörður. Director Hannes Þór Halldórsson relies on action and comedy gags, but it‘s primarily a structural parody: the slow realization of Bússi‘s own homosexuality doesn‘t feel like a reinforcement of the buddy cop cliche, but rather a confrontation with the masculinity myths of Hollywood cinema – just like fact that the whole country is cheering for the women‘s soccer world championship.

Harald Mühlbeyer (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy