Perfect cast and a good story

Overrated and overhyped

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Having a bit of a rubbish week offline,I decided that I would cheer myself up by watching two Comedy films.A fan of him in Noir's,I felt it was the perfect time to see the comedic side of Lino Venture.View on the film:Playing up to his tough guy image,Lino Venture gives a fabulous performance as Milan,with Venture's strained, agitated facial expressions being those worthy of a Silent Comedy. Irritating all he comes into contact with, Jacques Brel takes care that this irritation of Pignon does not spread to the viewer, by giving Pignon a misplaced sincerity towards Milan,which causes all situations to go from bad to worse. Breaking his play out of the hotel room, the screenplay by Francis Veber finds hilarity in making Milan and Pignon absolute misfits, with the cold, hard glances of Pignon being smashed by the cliff-edge emotions of Milan.Gathering the duo in a hotel, Veber smartly spends the opening 30 minutes playing Milan's hit man and Pignon's depression straight, that gives the avalanche of trouble that comes after a feeling of Pignon and Milan having an inability to stop themselves from getting pulled into each other's troubles. Making the physical Comedy look impressively effortless, director Édouard Molinaro & cinematographer Raoul Coutard load up Milan's troubles with slick tracking shots and sped-up car racing that tracks every attempt Milan makes to free himself from the pain of Pignon.

At last this standout has been issued on DVD which is promoting it as the film that introduced the world to Francois Pignon. Perhaps not uncoincidentally the DVD appears at a time when screenwriter Francis Veber has adapted his screenplay - he wasn't yet directing - for the stage with Richard Berry as Ralf Milan and Patrick Timsit as the eponymous pain in the ass. In an interview printed in the program for the play Veber speculates on why Billy Wilder's remake, Buddy, Buddy, was so disappointing; Veber suggests that Walter Matthau had such a backlog of outstanding comedy roles behind him that it was difficult to accept him as a dispassionate hit-man. There's probably something in what Veber says because the opposite is true of Lino Ventura who LOOKS dangerous and had an equally impressive backlog as a gangster in French polars. One early scene illustrates this perfectly; driving to his assignment he stops in a diner and inadvertently parks in front of a large camion. When the trucker, a big guy, gets ready to leave he lets out a squawk when he is unable to get out. The counterman taps Ventura as the culprit and suggests he move his car but quick. 'I'm finishing my coffee' he says quietly, the juggernaut jockey springs forward to confront him face to face. 'I'm finishing my coffee' says Ventura just as quietly and just as menacingly and the big guy backs down. It's difficult to imagine Matthau being as effective as that, Lee Marvin, no problem. The plot obeys all the rules of farce in which one person or even a group of people have a deadly serious objective and are single minded in trying to achieve it whilst a chain of unconnected events spin out of control around them preventing the task from being accomplished. Milan has been hired by the mob to take out a witness when he is brought into the court at exactly two.p.m. and he clings to that objective tenaciously despite the chaos surrounding him initiated by Francois Pignon, Jacques Brel. Veber's screenplay is so tightly constructed that it hardly matters that Jacques Brel is to acting what Jim Carrey is to Greek Tragedy. Veber's masterstroke is to delay the revelation that this is a farce by spending a whole reel establishing a polar and only gradually permitting his real intention to become evident. Even after twenty years it still comes up fresh.

I liked this film, not really belly laugh funny, but the situation comedy that Lino Ventura and Jacques Brel get themselves into, can be very humorous. Ventura plays an assassin who is trying to do a job, however he gets caught up with Brel's annoying and suicidal hypochondriac, foiling his attempts, by trying to commit suicide in the room next door to the room Ventura is in to do the hit. This causes the police to be called to the hotel. When they arrive however, Ventura persuades them that Brel is a friend and he will look after him and get him back on his feet. He decides to get rid of Brel, so that he can continue on his original task, but then ends up helping him to settle the score with his wife, who has left Brel for a rich medical doctor and that is when the real fun starts...!

One of the many great comedies from France from the 1970's, and a commodity which is seriously lacking nowadays in that country ! It is now available in France ( March 2007 ) on DVD, and please note that the DVD has English Subtitles if required. Ventura was a great actor and Brel, though hopeless as an actor, occupied a part which didn't need a great actor. Brel in this film can get on your nerves at time, just like Michael Crawford in "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" but despite this, the spectator has a good time ! The catchy, almost wailing, theme music by François Rauber (played on a whiny accordeon) is typical of many French films from the sixties and seventies and serves as a way of identifying the origin of the film. Given that now both the main protagonists of the film are dead, the sound of this accordéon is particularly nostalgic. The recipe of two character-opposed central characters is often a central tenet of French cinema ( Richard / Depardieu, Depardieu/Reno, De Funes/Carmet, De Funes/Bourvil ...... and Ventura/Brel in this film )and has been used with success to make generations of moviegoers laugh ! Francis Veber had a large had in this film although its director was Edouard Molinaro - is it any surprise then that one of the characters has the name François Pignon. Indeed, BREL is the ORIGINAL François Pignon. The character was subsequently interpreted by Pierre Richard, Jacques Villeret, Daniel Auteuil et alia ............