Starring: Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr., Albert Paulsen, Anthony Zerbe, Val Avery, Cathy Lee Crosby. The Laughing Policeman (1973). This movie is so real it makes every other movie in this town look like a movie. When a gunman opens fire on a crowded city bus in San Francisco, Detective Dave Evans is killed, along with the man he'd been following in relation to a murder.