As a genre, buddy cop comedies are struggling to make it through the summer blockbuster scene, and despite the recent success of the latest installment of Bad Boys, the scenario doesn’t look set to change anytime soon. Netflix’s latest French female buddy cop flick, Nice Girls, is the newest entry to the genre, which fails to either provide an elevated action spectacle or land the intended humorous tone to add to the entertainment quotient. Stereotypical characters, tedious and confusing plot structure, shoehorned romance plot, unremarkable baddies—these are just some of the downsides in an overall lackluster caper that fails to do justice to its picturesque coastal settings.
Spoilers Ahead
How Do Leo and Melanie Team Up?
Leo is a mercurial detective working in French Riviera PD, and as the Nice Girls movie begins, she is seen in a relentless search for her missing partner/fraternal figure, Ludo. Right off the bat, she chases one of Ludo’s informants, a hacker named Bat, across the city of Nice, but learns nothing of substance from him. Later on, Leo is summoned by Chief Hernandez, who asks her to focus on the upcoming Greenwashing Summit instead, where chief speaker, renowned environmentalist Sima Scott, will be present, and her war on profiteering conglomerates has already made her a target of the shady corporations.Â
Leo finally learns Ludo’s whereabouts, as it is revealed that during a covert mission at Hamburg, Ludo was murdered by some hitmen. Having a strong bond with him, Leo is visibly distressed, and even though Hernandez comforts her, she states that they cannot investigate Ludo’s demise, as Internal Affairs has already assigned a hotshot German sleuth to the case. Leo is not one to readily give up, as she decides to secretly continue the investigation anyway, and reaching Ludo’s apartment, she meets with Melanie, the German officer entrusted the case by IA. The two get off to a rocky start as neither of them trust each other, and Leo misdirects Melanie to look for intel from one of her rivals, Bauer. In the meantime, Leo goes to Bat for help with identification of a number of villas, which she believes could provide clues regarding Ludo’s murder.
After getting into a fight with Bauer and knocking him down, Melanie meets with Leo and hits her with a mean swing to make her realize she won’t be so easily shrugged off from the case. Bat meets with Leo to inform her that the picture of the villas ties with a local kingpin, Cassati, who is at present acting as a host to the conglomerate chiefs who will attend the upcoming summit. Melanie and Leo meet again, and their disagreement regarding the method of investigation continues, but eventually Leo takes a sympathetic approach to Melanie after Chief Hernandez refuses to help her due to Cassati’s involvement.
Who Was Responsible For Ludo’s Death?
Meanwhile, a sinister conspiracy is brewing in the background, as Cassati is revealed to be acting as a middleman between a shady garage crew who are rigging an EV with an IED, and Sima Scott’s director of communications, Frederic Valence, is their buyer, who intends to use it to kill Sima, ending her war against the conglomerates once and for all. Frederic is getting fat checks from the conglomerates to orchestrate the whole ordeal, and such a heinous conspiracy could have far-reaching impact on the prolonged struggle of the environmentalists. While staying undercover at Hamburg, Ludo had learned about all this, which eventually cost him his dear life as Frederic’s bodyguard/hitwoman, Kim, had killed him.
Putting their differences aside, Melanie and Leo finally agree to work together and infiltrate Cassati’s villa, but end up instigating a massive shootout that results in Cassati’s death, somehow managing to escape with their lives. An infuriated Hernandez promptly suspends Leo for insubordination, and later on, Leo learns from Melanie that she isn’t the German cop who was supposed to undertake the investigation to begin with. Melanie is a cop working under Paris PD, and during their joint investigation on a case, she and Ludo fell in love. Ludo had proposed to her before his final mission, and she is willing to do whatever it takes to bring his killer to justice—which is why she faked her identity and joined the investigation. Leo is finally able to accept Melanie as a partner after learning the truth, as their shared feelings of grief over Ludo’s passing allow them to form a bond with each other.
Were Leo and Melanie Able To Save The Day?
Following Cassati’s connection with the shady garage crew, Bat decides to look for clues on his own and gets himself captured. Meanwhile, Frederic and his bodyguard, Kim, take the EV shipment to the summit to set off the final phase of their master plan—i.e., killing Sima by locking her up inside the EV. Melanie and Leo realize that Bat is in jeopardy, and as they manage to rescue him just in time from the garage crew, Kim returns to promptly kill all the crew members to eliminate all the loose ends. The trio somehow escape from Kim and reach the summit but fail to warn others about the impending catastrophe. Instead, Kim captures Melanie and takes her away from the summit on a yacht with the intention of disposing of her in the ocean, but a timely intervention by Leo and Bat results in Kim’s arrest and Melanie’s rescue.
With the security footage of the yacht, where Kim had confessed about Frederic’s role in the conspiracy and the murder of Ludo, the detective duo convinced the authorities to take Frederic into custody. A couple of foolhardy cops were involved in Cassati’s plan as well, and they end up getting captured as well. As for the IED-planted EV, the trio manages to get it to a secluded spot on a coastal cliff before explosion, thereby saving Sima’s life in the process. In the aftermath, the resistance against the conglomerates gets even stronger after Frederic’s crimes are exposed, and the detective duo finally mourns Ludo’s death along with Hernandez and the rest of the police department during his funeral. It is hinted that Melanie and Leo will continue their partnership in the future as well, and possibly return in future adventures.
