Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Bob Taylor With Melville's death, Tavernier and Corneau became the masters of French film noir, but the latter has the dreamlike mood that the genre really needs to be effective. Le choix des armes has many effective scenes (usually involving either Depardieu or Lanvin) but sometimes leaves us cold. There is a little too much exposition in the storytelling--why show us Montand and his buddy smashing up the gang lord's opulent house when there is no dramatic effect to be gained? Or the elaborate four-way car pursuit (did the budget allow for all those stunt-drivers, so Corneau thought Why not?).The acting is mostly exceptional. The young Gérard Lanvin gives us a very frustrated young detective, Michel Galabru is his burnt-out superior, Richard Anconina plays a man trying to settle down to happy domesticity and failing, and Depardieu is simply great as Mickey le dingue, crazy and moving at the same time. The woman who plays Dany's wife with burning resentment takes over every scene she's in.

manuel-pestalozzi When I saw Yves Montand step outside his stately farm house in his gum boots I could not suppress a snort. From then on I was unable to take that character seriously (and that was pretty early into the movie). The whole set-up of the couple played by Montand and Catherine Deneuve seemed to me absolutely unrealistic and absurd. Horse breeding, buying the biggest mansion in Southern Ireland, while the (almost completely unrelated) story unfolds, come on! It is simply not possible to take that at face value as the movie apparently wants us to. If it was meant as an almost dreamlike fantasy, then it was a pretty corny one, if you ask me.Montand's acting occasionally had an odd goofball quality which at times came in handy (his great performance in Wages of Fear comes to mind). Here the goofball aspect plainly shines through, but with him as an ex gangster who has become some kind of landed gentry it is anything but an asset to the quality of the movie. I was really amazed to learn that Montand made Police Python 357 with the same director. It is a much better movie and he is brilliant there.So probably the script is the source of my dissatisfaction. The movie has lengths (a long, inconsequential sequence of a group of cars following another car, an elaborate smashing up of the living room of a fairly unimportant minor character). For Catherine Deneuve this must have been one of the most ungrateful roles in her distinguished career. She mainly drives up and down the access lane of the estate in a little Ford or sits in an anonymous hotel room waiting for her husband to call. Oh yes, there is some mare-trouble back at the farm, but that does not amount to much.It's strange, the character played by Gérard Depardieu is very convincing as human bulldozer who occasionally has a heart. I feel that this character was somehow let down by the script. He is the only driving force of the whole plot, the surroundings seem to be either passive or undecided. So he becomes undecided himself (and that's poison for a movie that is based on action). No wonder the guy turned into a raving maniac, come to think of it.

rsoonsa A gracefully paced and ably directed work featuring highly talented players, including Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve, along with Yves Montand, LE CHOIX DES ARMES is generally successful as cinematic art, although it must be stressed that it should properly be viewed in its French language format, since the subtitled American release is harshly cut and reveals post-production efforts not at all sympathetic with the original release. An escaped convict and killer, Mickey (Depardieu), chooses to hide from police pursuit upon the lavish estate of former organized crime doyen Noel Durrieux (Montand) and his wife Nicole (Deneuve, with a wonderfully layered interpretation of her rôle), but when detectives come near, Mickey flees to Paris, although he soon returns, bringing about a conflict between two criminal codes after Mickey believes that Durrieux has informed police of the escapee's location. There are carefully fleshed out parts here for numerous characters as the two principal antagonists career toward an inevitable climactic meeting, it becoming increasingly apparent that there are lessons to be learned beyond those of the scenario and they may not be divulged by ancillary figures. Auteur Corneau's metronomic tone mates well with the script's finely balanced, rather spare, dialogue, and with a complex plot not immediately pervious to a viewer, the film benefits from the director's ability to weave a diverse cast of characters into a discriminatory dramatic construction. Deneuve earns acting honours, while Depardieu is highly effective as a sociopath savaged by paranoia yet displaying a wide range of emotional engagement with disparate characters, and Montand is icily persuasive as a "retired" mob leader who is forced to reenter his past in the hope of achieving safety for him and his wife. Following a slowly gaited but logical storyline is difficult with the extensive cutting performed upon the film's U.S. version, that is burdened as well with poor sound transference and largely inferior processing, very unfortunate in this instance of a solidly crafted motion picture that deserves better.

michelerealini "Le choix des armes" is a good example of French movie thriller -"le polar à la française", we can define it a true cinematic genre.The film is an encounter between two generations of gangsters. The older one (Montand) lives now a quite life with his wife (Deneuve), the younger (Depardieu) has just escaped from prison. In this story both live personal dramas: Montand's brother dies during his escape and Deneuve is erroneously killed during a police operation; Depardieu face the impossibility of going elsewhere with his daughter and leading a normal life. He will pay the price of his dreams.The direction of Alain Corneau is strong. He's able to analyze each charachter in a exhaustive way, no one is left apart. In this way also Gerard Lanvin and Michel Galabru's roles are well treated, between them there's almost the same relationship as between the two gangsters. Lanvin is a young agent who believes in justice but no one helps him, whereas Galabru is a frustrated old policeman.Solid film, elegant, with action and many cat-and-mouse games.