French director Georges Lautner had always remained faithful to his image as a director of comedy films.It is with a lot of nostalgia that fans remember films such as 'Les Tontons Flingueurs', 'Le Guignolo', 'Joyeuses Pâques' etc.However,his impressive filmography is also full of films where he combined comedy with crime in order to give viewers something more to enjoy than mere laughter.'There was once a cop' is one such film which makes good use of French city Nice as the setting for a comedy film with shades of action about a tough cop who transforms into a family man in order to get desired results.Director Georges Lautner ensures that there is a good balance between action, comedy and suspense in his film.For this reason,he extracts good performances from actors namely Michel Constantin,Michel Lonsdale and Mireille Darc.He also got invaluable support from screen writer Francis Veber for devising comedy scenes.Lastly,this is a very useful film to understand the mechanism of French police especially in the context of special missions.