EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie originally appeared on the site on October 5, 2021 as part of FantasticFest. It’s now available in select theaters and will be available on demand July 12 from Epic Pictures.

Leynilögga means Secret Log in Islandic, as far as Google tells me, which is a funny joke if true, as this film is all about a tough cop in denial of his own sexual orientation who falls in love with his new partner.

Directed by Hannes Þór Halldórsson, the goalie for Iceland’s national soccer team, it’s all about criminal mastermind Rikki Ferrari (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), who was once a model before being disfigured. Now, he’s gone full Joker and is on a murder spree that can only be stopped by buddy cop — odd couple buddy cop at that — duo Bussi and Hörđur. Bussi is the tough guy who can barely keep his apartment clean and his face shaved, while Hörđur is a male model cop. Yet the longer they’re together, Hörđur’s looks and Bussi’s repressed homosexuality soon turn their partnership into more than a work relationship. And Rikki starts to blackmail them once he learns their cop secret.

Aren’t all buddy cop movies romcoms when you really get down to it? Instead of all that macho posturing and showing off guns, didn’t you ever wonder if they really just wanted to, well, show off their guns in private? I’ve never seen a coming out in the middle of a brutal gunfight, but hey — that’s the kind of ballistic buffoonery that Cop Secret has in store.

And if the end feels very Nolan Batman, well, director of photography Elli Cassata was a cameraman on Batman Begins.