L'Homme en colère (1979)
Directed by Claude Pinoteau

Film Review

After having made one successful thriller together - Le Silencieux (1973) - director Claude Pinoteau and actor Lino Ventura collaborated on a comedy - La Gifle (1974) - and two subsequent thrillers - L'Homme en colère and La Septième cible (1984).  The second Pinoteau-Ventura thriller stands apart from the other two in that it was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, and has a far more American feel to it - more action oriented, far less character driven.  It's grittier, more violent and more energetic than most thrillers that were being made in France at the time, but it still retains something of the classic French policier.  Pinoteau's direction is slick and confident, but the predominance of actions scenes reveals a distinct paucity of imagination and substance in a somewhat formulaic plot.

Ventura, as ever, has a commanding presence, but it is his wrestler's physique, not his skill as an actor, that Pinoteau most relies on, and this is to the film's detriment.  Every other scene seems to end either in a full-on car chase or a vicious fist fight, and you're bound to end up thinking Montreal is the gangster capital of the world.  The taciturn tough guy Ventura makes an effective contrast with the vivacious Angie Dickinson, who does her best to make her thinly sketched character believable.  The biggest treat the film offers is Donald Pleasence showing up intermittently as shady go-between - such a shame he was not given a much bigger role in the proceedings.  Helped by Claude Bolling's mawkish score, the film ends on a toe-curlingly saccharine note, which looks suspiciously as if it was intended more for an American audience.  L'Homme en colère is a well-paced and absorbing thriller, but its lack of depth and originality ensures that, once seen, it is very quickly forgotten.

Film Synopsis

When he is informed of the death of his son Julien, Romain Dupré goes to Canada to identify the body.  The dead man turns out not be Dupré's son, but a stranger who, for some reason, is carrying Julien's identification papers.  Dupré soon discovers that his son has been involved in people trafficking, smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States from Canada.  The dead man is one of Julien's latest clients, who died in a shoot-out at a police checkpoint.  Currently, Julien is on the run, pursued not only by the police but by gangsters who are determined to recover some money that belongs to them...