WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
If you’ve ever seen a buddy-cop movie, you’ll likely be able to predict the ending of Almost Cops after the first five minutes. I don’t just mean the plot particulars, either. I’m also talking about the endpoint of the intersecting character arcs, building to the platonic equivalent of whether Ramon and Jack will end up together (spoiler alert: yes, they will). It’s all so obvious, so signposted, that it’s almost worth breaking down just as an exercise in explaining what not to do to keep a somewhat old-fashioned genre feeling fresh.
This is technically a revenge plot, of course, so a lot of the climax revolves around Ramon and Jack bringing Kevin’s killers to justice. But it also involves their respective career paths, their relationship, and their worldviews, though admittedly to a relatively minor degree. We’ll explore all this in due course, but to start with, allow me to give you a simple rundown of the particulars.
The Plot Of Almost Cops Is Built On A Lucky Coincidence
I’m not the type to poke holes in movies unless I think something is actively detrimental to its own internal logic, but it’s worth pointing out that Almost Cops is built on a very lucky twist of fate. Initially, we’re introduced to one of our protagonists, Jack, investigating a drug shipment with his partner, Kevin. Promptly, the shipment is hijacked by masked attackers, Kevin is killed, and Jack is swiftly demoted from detective to Community Service Officer (CSO). He was already rash and impulsive, and his unwillingness to let Kevin’s death go made him a liability.
Luckily, though, Jack was reassigned to a unit including Ramon, Kevin’s half-brother. Ultimately, this doesn’t really matter, since the plot has to get kick-started one way or another, but I do think it’s symptomatic of the movie’s lazy approach to plotting in general, which we’ll continuously see reflected elsewhere as we go.
Jack being left alive during the initial ambush is another difficult-to-explain detail, even in hindsight, which speaks to this lack of narrative care.
Institutional Corruption
During their investigation, Ramon and Jack come to learn through Smits that Kevin was on the take. They also begin to suspect, after a bombing of their hideaway, that Jack’s boss Daphne had masterminded an illegal, internal operation to have Kevin offed in order to obscure deep-rooted institutional corruption.
This isn’t quite right, but it’s close. Daphne isn’t guilty of anything but obliviousness, though three other officers, Guido, Lizzy, and Juan, were all peddling drugs under her nose. When Ramon and Jack begin to get too close for comfort, the corrupt trio kidnaps them, obviously with the intention of killing them. But there’s always room for some exposition first.
It would be a fairly nice twist if Almost Cops really doubled down on the idea that Kevin was corrupt. And he was, in truth, working alongside Guido, Lizzy, and Juan. But the script ultimately backs away from this a little bit by revealing that Kevin had decided to put an end to the drug smuggling, which was why the others killed him. It doesn’t quite explain why they left his famously unruly partner alive to seek revenge, though.
Jandino Asporaat and Werner Kolf in Almost Cops | Image via Netflix
Going It Alone
For quite contrived reasons, Jack had obscured the fact that Kevin was his partner from Ramon, so when that bombshell is dropped by Guido, it causes a major rift between the two. Ramon, incensed by having the precise circumstances of his brother’s death described to him and by the perceived betrayal of Jack keeping his relationship with Kevin a secret, is able to break free and attack Guido, Juan, and Lizzy. The latter two are caught, and the former legs it to ultimately leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to the real mastermind, Richard.
Because he and Jack have had a falling out, Ramon goes it alone and immediately gets captured, just like Jack would have once done. But luckily, Jack himself has learned the error of his ways here and assembles a team that includes Moussa, Youssef, and the other CSOs to help rescue Ramon. This is one of those very obvious ways in which a movie like this shows that its characters have “grown” – by essentially turning them into each other for a stretch.
This simplistic idea is made sillier by Ramon refusing to collaborate with Jack until he sincerely apologizes, lending an almost childlike quality to their reconciliation. But the point is made.
All’s Well That Ends Well
While we’re on the subject of overly obvious thematic detail, the ending of Almost Cops reinforces its core ideas in several really clunky ways. First, it has the bad guys, who are all characterised by self-serving greed pretty much exclusively, turn on each other. Then it has mild-mannered and idealistic Ramon go postal, defeating Ramon in a brutal fight, even though that very much isn’t his thing. And it also has Guido snatch the necklace from Ramon’s neck – inherited from his local hero father – to metaphorically free him from the responsibility of his legacy. Or something, anyway.
Richard is predictably arrested, and Jack and Ramon get their happy ending. This includes both deciding to remain as CSOs despite being offered positions in CID. This is a big deal development for both; Ramon initially wanted to emulate his father’s career, and Jack was extremely bitter about being demoted to a CSO. Having worked the job so close to the streets and the real people they were tasked with protecting, both had decided that there was more value in that than becoming small cogs in a much bigger, corrupt machine.
Makes sense to me. I’m not sure we needed a whole movie – especially not this whole movie – to make that point, though.