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"Monsieur Doyle de New York" still on the case, adrift in Scag City's European mirror. "Bravo, it's D-Day in Marseilles. The Americans have landed." Porkpie hat and Hawaiian shirt and Gene Hackman's pungent fire, tenacious justice as loudmouth tourist. His grudging ally is a police inspector (Bernard Fresson) introduced elbow-deep in fish guts, their target is the narcotics boss (Fernando Rey) whose specialty is immaculate elegance in sordid surroundings. Getting his quips lost in translation, vainly hitting on chiclets, knocking back Scotch with bartenders, a hero as clumsy as Baudelaire's grounded albatross. Kidnapped and pumped full of dope, he slowly recognizes his role as the kingpin's bait. "Poor Popeye. You are, how you say, homesick?" John Frankenheimer purposely trades the cunning propulsion of Friedkin's original for dislocation and pain, action at once more jagged and more humane. "Honest but stupid" is the crime baron's assessment of the Yank, scant consolation comes from a withered Brit (Cathleen Nesbitt) who slips the watch off the captive's wrist and onto her own syringe-cracked arm. The recovery in a squalid cell is a fine bit of excruciation, with Hackman making a virtuosic meal out of the addict's withdrawal—cursing and blubbering, recalling an aborted athletic past to a Gallic partner who never heard of Mickey Mantle, screaming for "the real Hershey bars with the nuts in them." Telephoto setups offer glimpses of street protests, a dry dock at night is illuminated by welding sparks and gunfire and swiftly flooded. "I hope you can swim, asshole!" The concluding chase takes off from the Arab Quarter after a bus and then a yacht, with handheld POV inserts and a flash of graffiti ("Vive la Mort?") building up to the choice stinger. An intriguing relation to Penn's concurrent Night Moves is to be observed. With Philippe Léotard, Ed Lauter, Charles Millot, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, André Penvern, and Raoul Delfosse.
--- Fernando F. Croce |