Netchaïev est de retour (1991)
Directed by Jacques Deray

Film Review

Coming towards the end of Jacques Deray's illustrious career, Netchaïev est de retour failed to make anything like the impact of the director's earlier thrillers but it is a slick production that boasts an impressive cast and compelling story, taken from the novel of the same title by Jorge Semprún.  Prior to this, Deray had garnered a reputation as a thriller director par excellence in France, attracting massive audience (in excess of two million) with his Delon and Belmondo vehicles, such as Borsalino (1970) , Trois hommes à abattre (1980) and Le Marginal (1983).

Intelligently scripted by Deray in collaboration with the successful novelist Dan Franck, Netchaïev est de retour is a more sophisticated kind of thriller than the star-led potboilers that were commonplace in French cinema in the 1970s and '80s.  In fact it has far more in common with the serious thrillers that Costa-Cavras made near the start of his career - Z (1969), L'Aveu (1970) and État de siège (1973).  This impression is reinforced by the fact that a lead actor in these films, Yves Montand, takes the central role in Deray's film, turning in another fine performance in what would be his last but one screen appearance (he bowed out in his next film, IP5, under the direction of Jacques Beineix).

Here Montand plays a tough-willed intelligence supremo up against a dangerous opponent within a corrupt political establishment.  It's effectively a return to the hard-boiled French neo-polar that predominated in the late 1970s, although the formula clearly had somewhat less relevance to cinemagoers of the early 1990s.  The supporting cast includes some notable actors - Miou-Miou, Patrick Chesnais and Vincent Lindon - who all add lustre to the production.

Not yet ten years into his incredibly prolific career, Lindon had already distinguished himself in supporting roles in some notable films - Beineix's 37°2 le matin (1985),  Claude Sautet's Quelques jours avec moi (1988) - and his contribution to Deray's film can only reinforce the impression that he is a star-in-the-making, with an amazing career ahead of him.  Lindon's portrayal of a disillusioned terrorist is appropriately ambiguous and strangely sympathetic, prefiguring the darkly introspective roles that the actor would gravitate towards in later years.

As ever, Jacques Deray shows his skill as a director most forcefully in the film's dramatic action sequences, which are well-paced, suspenseful and shocking without being gratuitously over-the-top.  He isn't quite so successful with the film's quieter passages, where the over-wordy script tends to intrude more than it should.  Netchaïev est de retour falls somewhat short of the excellence of Deray's finest films, La Piscine (1969) and Flic Story (1975), but it makes compelling viewing and is a cut above most French thrillers of the time.

Film Synopsis

Netchaïev is the code name of a notorious political activist who turned to terrorism in the late 1960s, working as part of an international network of revolutionaries.  He is thought to have died in Gibraltar in 1985 under mysterious circumstances, but five years later he suddenly pops up again in Paris, just when the capital is caught in a fresh wave of terrorist attacks.  The news of Netchaïev's unexpected return comes as a shock to his former friends, who have now become respectable figures in society.  His father, Pierre Marroux, occupies a senior position in the French security services and has his own reasons for being concerned by this development.  However, far from wanting to resume his murderous exploits, Netchaïev is desperate to make a fresh start.  He offers to give details of an impending terrorist attack in exchange for a full pardon.  Unfortunately, Netchaïev's return poses a threat to the French government which has some murky secrets to protect...