Coventry
I usually don't reveal my final judgment of the movie straight away in the review's subject line, but in the case of "Le Professionnel" I just felt like I had to tell it like it is… This is, simply put and without exaggerating, the perfect popcorn-entertainment action/thriller, and it catapulted itself straight towards a high position in my list of personal favorite movies of all times! "Le Professionnel" has a terrific screenplay with wonderfully deranged characters and plentiful of ultimately exciting action sequences. It also features the best J-P Belmondo performance of his career, by far, and stellar support from the entire cast surrounding him. And then of course there's the truly phenomenal musical score of Ennio Morricone… The astounding theme song "Chi Mai" perhaps wasn't originally composed for this particular film (it appeared first in the obscure art-film "Maddalena" in 1971) but it's forever unified with "Le Professionnel", and thanks to its immense commercial success the song also became one of the biggest hits in Morricone's inexhaustible repertoire! The basic plot of "Le Professionnel" is simple but very effective and compelling. Josselin "Joss" Beaumont is a highly trained French special agent who gets send to an unspecific African country on a secret mission to assassinate the corrupt self-elected President N'Jala. By the time his plane lands, however, the president has suddenly become a friend of the French nation and Beaumont's unscrupulous government sacrifices him. Beaumont is imprisoned under inhuman circumstances, but after two long years he makes a daring escape and returns to France around the same time President N'Jala makes an official state visit. Once home, he joyously informs his former superiors that he will fulfill his assignment and thus, knowing Beaumont's skills and imaginative operating methods, the secret service mobilizes their toughest agents to protect the president and to hunt down Beaumont. "Le Professionnel" is chock- full of imaginative sequences that are simultaneously action-packed, comical and intensely built up towards! For example, in order to reach apartment of his wife that is heavily guarded by several policemen, Beaumont creates a diversion by hooking up with a group of homeless men and run amok in front of the apartment. Another example is how he always toys around with the media and stages cat- and-mouse games with the best agents on the force. The ultimate highlight is of course the virulent car chase through the narrow Parisian streets and even underneath the Eifel Tower! This scene becomes even more perplexing when you realize that Belmondo always performs his own stunts. The film also has the most diverse and eccentric supportive characters walking around. How about the vicious & cruel lesbian agent who nearly violates Joss' wife whilst interrogating her? Or the wicked inspector Farges who obsessively tracks down Joss because he repeatedly humiliated him. The most fascinating character, next to Joss Beaumont of course, is undoubtedly the Commissioner Rosen, as depicted here by the severely underrated Robert Hossein. Rosen is a merciless, stoic and persistent copper. He's the complete opposite of Beaumont, which makes their confrontations uncomfortable and suspenseful for the viewer to look at. Especially their final confrontation is sheer genius and qualifies as the absolute best western scene in a non- western movie! A must-see
ElMaruecan82
A hit-man, a helicopter, an unforgettable climactic sequence, a, thriller, a music … It's sad that 90% of movie fans now remember "The Professional" as a great action/thriller film made by a French director named … Luc Besson, and featuring the acting debut of Natalie Portman, and Jean Reno as a professional hit-man protecting her from the claws of a demented cop played by Gary Oldman. I guess EVERYONE in America associates THIS title with THIS film, while in France, and probably in Europe, when people think of "The Professional", there's a beautiful melody instantly resonating in their mind, a penetrating score that conveys the fatality hanging over the shoulders of one of the greatest antiheroes of French Cinema: Joss Beaumont, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in his career's most defining role, and the notes I'm thinking of while writing these lines are certainly some of the greatest that ever enriched Cinema's musical memories, a sound made by the great Ennio Morricone. If you haven't seen the film and if you're unfamiliar with the music, I allow you to suspend the reading of this review, because it's so pointless compared to the beauty of "The Professional"'s score. And I implore you to go listen to it, before getting back to this useless assemblage of words.What is "The Professional", or who is he? I don't know if this really matters if you don't plan to watch the film. It's so simplistic in its premise that it can be compared to anything made before or after, like "The Day of the Jackal" or even the 1994's "Professional" after all: you have your traditional cat-and-mouse chase between a killer with a sense of honor, and the cops and politicians whose ambiguous motives make you inevitably root for their target. Manipulation? No, the film is simply above these considerations, when you watch it; you understand that it doesn't have no purpose else than to captivate you until a rewarding confrontation. It still has an average 80's B-movie feel, some campy acting, some visual and sound effects that need to be reconsidered, the blood looks like red paint, in fact, the form is as simplistic as the content. And the treatment toward women is exquisitely misogynistic in the purest tradition of James Bond films where even in the most honorable woman, there's something slutty waiting for the magnetic Belmondo, to exude itself, all the opportunities to expose some nude breasts or curvy legs are good, but for some reason, it suits the spirit of a film that doesn't embarrass itself with political correctness: these were other days where movies obeyed to some formulas that didn't depend on the public's reaction. Indeed, the script written by Michel Audiard, one of the most popular French writers, is a challenge for moral sensitivity, since nobody's spared : Africans, politicians, women, cops, there's a cloud of badness contaminating the air and spilling over all the characters, and in this environment where each works for his or her interest, all we can do is to root for the man who follows his instinct, his sense of duty, his honor.Joss Beaumont is the man who was paid to kill the President of a fictional African country, and was literally sold by his government. After two years, he's back to France, and determined to finish his job, even if the President became a friend of France. People are so banally corrupted that the very notion of hero and villain becomes pointless. There's a great line coming from the African head of state who tells Joss that 'it took France two revolutions and five republics to become a very debatable form of democracy, and he's supposed to do that in years?' During the disenchanted 70's when France was stricken by an economical crisis, the infamous "Giscard presidency", and when the public was disillusioned with the power of law, an icon had to incarnate this moral ambiguity between what is legal and is legitimate. Since his debuts with Melville, Belmondo was born to play likable outlaws and needless to say that "The Professional" was tailor-made for him.The movie has reached such an iconic status in France that it might catch off-guard some younger or foreign audience, because at first sight, there's something almost deliberately poor in the way it's handled until the cat-and-mouse aspect gradually turns more into a sort of chess game where Beaumont is so well-trained that he becomes a real mastermind, using the greatest tricks he learned, he even refers to chess by using the 'playing the whites' strategy: the attack. And naturally, there's always this feeling of everyone trying to anticipate the moves of the other, to which person he'll get, and what he'll do next. Beaumont's goal is clear: assassinating the President, and for cops: stopping Beaumont, by any means and for that job: there's the unflappable face of Robert Hossein, as Rosen, the man who made it personal: so calm, so scary that he's the perfect antagonist to the flamboyant and charismatic Beaumont.To conclude, whatever could be perceived as flaws is so archetypal of a certain breed of French cinema that it takes a sort of gourmet pleasure to appreciate it, especially today when, for the sake of realism, the macho man has turned into a sexual beast and when characters are all bland and particularly unlikable. Interestingly, one of the new generations actors who was inspired by Belmondo is Jean Dujardin and you can see how he inherited his mannerisms, this mix of charisma and flamboyance. There are some times where nothing can beat old-school cinema, because it was so damn serious but never took itself seriously.And the last five minutes are so breathtaking, that whatever flaws you may have pointed out, it totally redeems the film, especially thanks to the iconic score of Ennio Morricone. Simply put, "The Professional" is one of the best French films!
Guy Lanoue
A tailor-made vehicle for Belmondo, out-Burting Burt Reynolds in this action flick with non-stop action. The whole thing is laughable thirty years later because we are used to Bourne Identities coming out of our fannies, but this is how they made films before CGI and mega budgets: a charming star, an excellent ensemble cast, well-motivated action, and a relatively tight script. Okay, it's cheesy by modern standards, but one must remember French politics re. Africa (remember Bokassa? The French do) and mercenaries. It makes more sense to the French, and certainly didn't export well. But you can nonetheless see why Belmondo could get away with a certain wink at the camera Burt smarminess, because he always played it with a touch of comedy, and he was way more charming than Burt ever was. ALthough you can read this film as played for laughs, at the time it's plot was believable, and the cold-hearted treatment of citizens by government forces is certainly more than believable to Europeans. Watch it and enjoy. How many low budget action films stand up 30 years later? This one does, and the subtitling is pretty good.
