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| name = Cops and Robbers
| image = Cops and robbers (film poster).jpg
| caption = Promotional movie poster
| director = [[Aram Avakian]]
| producer = [[Elliott Kastner]] <br />George Pappas
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| editing = [[Barry Malkin]]
| distributor = [[United Artists]]
| released =
| runtime = 89 minutes
| country = United States
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| budget =
}}
'''''Cops and Robbers''''' is a 1973 [[crime
==Plot==
Police officers Tom and Joe are neighbors living an OK suburban life with homes, a swimming pool and families in a high-density community and they commute to work together. Both are working-class and looking for more money for a better lifestyle.
Joe robs a liquor store while in uniform and literally walks away into the night. After that, he tells Tom, and both ultimately realize that pulling off a big heist would get them out of a dangerous job and, since they are NYPD officers, it gives them a big advantage in whatever crime they choose to accomplish. So, what do they do? They go to the mob!
Tom goes to a mobster’s house and asks what he would pay $2 million for them to steal. The gangster does some verbal jousting and finally tells Gorman about bearer bonds and that he would need to steal $10 million worth of them to earn the $2 million.
It’s how they accomplish the heist and get the payoff that offers the clever details that make the movie. Here are some of “Cops and Robbers’” neat twists:
• After Tom in disguise meets with the mobster, some of the gang try to follow him to find out his true identity. As they follow him up an escalator from the subway, Joe holds up the line after Tom has passed. Of course, the gangsters don’t realize at that moment that the two are together, and by the time they get to the street, Tom has disappeared, as has Joe.
• After deciding to rob a Wall Street brokerage during a tickertape parade for astronauts just back from space (the film is set in the early 1970s), they steal the bearer bonds, but then rip them up and throw them out a window as part of the parade celebration of a cascade of paper coming out of skyscraper windows. This idea is the key component to the whole robbery: they don’t have to worry about anyone finding the stolen bonds because the bonds no longer exist, and the media report that $12 million was stolen (an ironic twist is that the executive of the brokerage house robbed by the duo snags $2 million for himself with no one but the two crooked cops the wiser).
• For transportation, the duo uses patrol units (“borrowed” and then returned unnoticed from a police garage). Of course, both have uniforms (although Tom is a plain-clothes detective), which is to their advantage, especially at the end when they make the pickup of the $2 million in Central Park in an area where only bicycles are allowed - but so are police cars.
In the end, they survive the mob’s trap in the park and get away with the $2 million, while the mobster is killed because he fouled up and lost the money to the two cops.
==Cast==
{{div col}}
* [[
* [[
* [[
* [[Charlene Dallas]] as Secretary
* [[
* [[
* [[
* [[Shepperd Strudwick]] as Mr. Eastpoole
* James Ferguson as Liquor Store Clerk
* [[Frances Foster]] as Bleeding Lady
*
*
* George Harris II as Harry
* [[
* [[Randy Jurgensen]] as Randy
* [[Albert Henderson (actor)|Albert Henderson]] as Cop {{div col end}}
==Additional information==
This film was also released under the following titles:
* Entimotatoi kleftes - Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title)
* Flics et voyous - France
* Polícias e Ladrões - Portugal
* Rosvot ja jeparit - Finland
* Se ci provi... io ci sto! - Italy
* Snutar som robbar - Sweden
* Treffpunkt Central Park - West Germany
* Unos policías muy ladrones - Spain
==Reception==
Roger Greenspun wrote a favorable review of the film for the ''New York Times''.<ref>{{cite news |last=Greenspun |first=Roger |title=Cops and Robbers (1973): Police Team Engineers Caper in 'Cops and Robbers' |quote=If anybody had told me even a week ago about a funny, exciting, semi-plausible, exceptionally intelligent caper movie, I would not have believed him. "Cops and Robbers," despite its title, and despite the slightly dumb-dumb ad campaign that is introducing it, is all those good things and more. It is uncommonly well acted. And it is the first movie in a long time to understand, rather than merely to exploit, its New York City locales. |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=August 16, 1973 |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E0CE7D61E3FEE37A25755C1A96E9C946290D6CF }} {{Dead link|date=March 2021}}</ref>
==Soundtrack==
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cops And Robbers (1973 Film)}}
[[Category:English-language films]]▼
[[Category:1973 films]]
[[Category:1970s crime comedy films]]
[[Category:1970s heist films]]
[[Category:American films]]▼
[[Category:American crime comedy films]]
[[Category:American heist films]]
[[Category:Films set in New York City]]
[[Category:Fictional portrayals of the New York City Police Department]]
[[Category:Films about the New York City Police Department]]
[[Category:Films based on American novels]]
[[Category:Films based on works by Donald E. Westlake]]
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[[Category:1973 comedy films]]
[[Category:Films produced by Elliott Kastner]]
▲[[Category:1970s English-language films]]
▲[[Category:1970s American films]]
[[Category:English-language crime comedy films]]
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