Verdict
Summary
With a breezy jazz score and a mostly upbeat tone, Ho! – on the surface – is deceptively contrary to its brutal, bloody reality that has startling and shocking violence, and while it more or less follows the formula of most gangster / heist films before it, it stays fluffy and floats thanks to Belmondo’s effortless swagger.
Plot:
A race car driver becomes a getaway driver for a gang … and then their leader.
Review:
After a spectacular crash on the track during a race, suave racer Francois Holin (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) – or Ho for short – retires from the racing circuit but soon finds his next calling as a getaway driver for a ruthless gang that robs banks and other establishments of their cash. When there’s an opening, Ho angles himself to be the leader of the gang, and despite the gang’s huffing and puffing, Ho does a pretty good job at it until he gets himself caught and ends up in the slammer. Not realizing that he’s a major league criminal, the justice system believes him to just be a petty criminal or a vagrant, and Ho does a masterful job at convincing the prison guards and the system that he’s an absolute nobody by behaving (and eventually looking) like a stupid hobo. When he’s released on good behavior after a few months, the system realizes their catastrophic blunder and all of a sudden Ho becomes a celebrity overnight. The media calls him a master thief and the heir apparent to Al Capone, and Ho loves the comparison and basks in the glow of his infamy. Ho soon reforms the gang and takes a gorgeous girlfriend who doesn’t realize at first that he’s such a famous guy, and then things get serious as the heist he and the gang pulls off turns into a flustercluck of epic proportions and he and his gang are hunted down and end up in a huge garage where there’s nowhere to turn … except against each other.
With a breezy jazz score and a mostly upbeat tone, Ho! – on the surface – is deceptively contrary to its brutal, bloody reality that has startling and shocking violence, and while it more or less follows the formula of most gangster / heist films before it, it stays fluffy and floats thanks to Belmondo’s effortless swagger. He carries the movie all the way through, and he’s the main reason to watch it. Just don’t expect a delightfully happy ending because the film’s core is quite violent and cutthroat. Robert Enrico’s direction is assured and strong.
Kino Lorber’s recent Blu-ray release of Ho! looks and sounds solid in a new 4K restoration, and there’s a new audio commentary by three film historians, plus the trailer and a slipcover.
