Thursday, August 7, 2008
Un Flic aka A Cop aka Dirty Money
The periodic viewing of a good French cop and robber movie should be considered one of life's pleasures. Un Flic aka A Cop aka Dirty Money was the last film directed by Jean Pierre-Melville. I saw Bob le flambeur a couple years back. This film won't change your life, but it is great to see Alain Delon in a kind of Dirty Harry, Popeye Doyle role. And Richard Crenna, a quintessential American TV actor seems much at home as the stylish crook, with lots of tricks up his sleeve (literally)
The set pieces and highlights of the film are the robberies. The opening shots coastal France with the four robbers (with their hats and raincoats) riding around in a black Plymouth through a driving storm is intercut to black credits creating tension and anticipation for the somewhat botched robbery to come.
Delon and Crenna both are involved with Catherine Deneuve as Cathy, one of those archetypal female characters in detective movies who seems to be there only as a link between the two adversaries while wearing custom quality designer gowns, of course. There is also this strange kind of subplot link between Delon and a transvestite dancer who works in Crenna's club, but she seems to be there mainly so he can hit her at one point in the script.
But the best sequence of the film is the improbable second robbery on a train. There are some cheesy miniatures and stuff that would be purely laughable except that it is apparent that Melville knows how to make these kinds of sequences develop and move in a way that makes you glad that the movies were invented.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:39 PM
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