Verdict
Summary
A sprawling story told over the course of many years, the drama La Scoumoune (“Hit Man”) features solid performances, and a pretty good delivery of a tale of friends for life. It has a supporting performance by Claudia Cardinale as a woman both men love over the years, and writer / director Jose Giovanni offered characters we care for. Uniquely told and nicely delivered, this one is for fans of Belmondo most of all, as he shines.
Plot:
A hitman spends years trying to protect his best friend when they both end up in the same prison.
Review:
Charming hit man Borgo (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is an excellent assasin for the mob in the 1930s, and his best friend is Saratov (Michel Constantin), who is unlucky, also for hire by the mob. When Saratov is framed and sent to prison for a double sentence of 20 years of hard labor and another 20 years of banishment, Borgo does his best to try to spearhead the appeal process, which goes nowhere fast. He figures the best way to protect this friend is to arrange for himself to be sent to the same prison, and when he arrives, he does his best to protect his friend, despite all the obstacles that threaten them on a daily basis. After years of a daily grind and constantly trying to keep Saratov from his own bad temper, they – and everyone else at the prison – receive an offer: Comb the beaches of Normandy after the war, searching for land mines and bombs that haven’t detonated, and for their service their sentences will be reduced depending on how many mines and bombs they each diffuse. Borgo and Saratov turn out to be the best at the job, while many of their fellow prisoners are killed during the process, and Saratov is seriously wounded, which all but guarantees his early release. When they’ve both been released, they’re older and wiser, and yet their past catches up to them when old beefs come back to haunt them, and Borgo finds himself the last man standing.
A sprawling story told over the course of many years, the drama La Scoumoune (“Hit Man”) features solid performances, and a pretty good delivery of a tale of friends for life. It has a supporting performance by Claudia Cardinale as a woman both men love over the years, and writer / director Jose Giovanni offered characters we care for. Uniquely told and nicely delivered, this one is for fans of Belmondo most of all, as he shines.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release of La Scoumoune comes in a sharp high definition transfer, and includes a new audio commentary by a film critic, plus the trailer.
