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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jean-Paul Belmondo makes the movie worth seeing; it's part thriller, part comic book, part moralizing, 11 Jan 2009
Josselin Beaumont (Jean-Paul Belmondo), agent for the Special Action Service, a shadowy French government agency, is sent to the African country of Malagasi to kill Colonel Njala, its president-for-life. Political considerations suddenly change and the assassination is called off. Instead of recalling Beaumont, his masters decide to betray him to secure a good relationship with the president-for-life. And the president-for-life intends to show his compassion for a beaten man by only giving Joss a life sentence. First, of course, Joss must be turned into a beaten man, through brutality, torture and hard time. After two years, plenty of time to figure out he was betrayed, Joss breaks out and returns to France. And there he informs his former masters that he's going to complete the assignment while Njala is in France on a state visit. Try and stop me, is his message.
A warning: This is one of those movies where the creators think that what is basically a thriller can be turned into "serious contemporary drama" by having a meaningful and ironic ending. That corny and self-important assumption has made so many movies -- American, French and whatever -- seem as dated and unsatisfying as The Parallax View.
The movie really starts when Joss gets back to Paris. The high-level bureaucrats are scurrying about, more frightened for their careers if Joss succeeds than they are for Malagasi's president-for-life's life. They know Joss has been trained by the best...he's quick, resourceful, humorous, tough and clever. (After all, he's Jean-Paul Belmondo). So just who is going to stop him, asks the minister at a meeting of senior executives of the Special Action Service? There's a long pause. Men look nervously at each other. Then..."I will," speaks up Commissioner Rosen (Robert Hossein) of the government's Intervention Bureau. Rosen is as tough and smart as Joss, and much more ruthless.
Wait a minute. Is this a thriller with some humor or a cartoon with some thrills? It turns out Le Professionel is both, with a bit of how-awful-governments-can-be moralizing thrown in. Part of the time the movie is engrossing with a clever plot; part of the time I couldn't help snickering over how over-played some of the characters were. The dialogue moves between the two. Enrico Morricone's obvious score doesn't help.
With Le Professionel, however, the ride with Belmondo in the driver's seat is almost worth it. Belmondo, 48 when the movie was made, is one of those actors who look their increasing years and benefit from them. Even at his youngest he was no pretty boy, not with that long face, underslung jaw, thick lips and deep lines bracketing his mouth. If he is sometimes called (by Americans) the French Bogart, it would be equally true to call Bogart the American Belmondo.
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