Le Professionnel

France released, PAL/Region 2 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ),French ( Mono ),WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Posters, Trailer(s),SYNOPSIS: Joss Beaumont (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a French spy given the assignment of killing an African dictator, and when he arrives in Africa to do so, he is captured and put in prison. The political winds had changed - the dictator is now an ally - and the best way to handle the agent is to keep him in jail. Naturally at odds now with his former bosses and with an ax to grind for his own incarceration, the agent escapes after two years in prison and heads back to Paris where he announces that he is going to finish his assassination job during the coming diplomatic visit of the African leader. Once aware of his intent, the French government sets up one trap after another, but to no avail - the agent remains free and there is no doubt that he has the full capacity to do exactly what he says. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Ceasar Awards, Product Description

The pragamatism: the silent wind!

Le professional was if I may, one of the films (Three days of the condor) that inspired "The Bourne identity" .

The reality has by far, much more imagination than the fiction! A secret agent (Jean Paul Belmondo in a smoldering performance) is a spy and assassin hired and sent by his government with the purpose to knock off a foreign dictator. (And in 1981, certainly there were a well nourished number of candidates, by the way, all around the world), but as you and me know, the pragmatism originates a sudden shift of purposes and he is betrayed because now he is useless. Locked away in prison, he manages to escape and take his own revenge.

The early eighties was indeed, the perfect stage in which Poland, Germany, England, USA, conscious of the progressive crumbling of U.R.S.S. employed the most unthinkable and not detailed and sophisticated strategies in all fronts; on the other hand many countries around the world firmly believed that with the end of Vietnam's War, the Fascism would be back masked of despotism, deceived democracies and corrupt regimes supported by underworld forces (you and me are aware) that based their principles and actions according the well known utterance. 2the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

This hazardous behavior resolved temporally certain political disturbs in some latitudes, but also, permitted the blossoming of others.

The spy profession was in this sense, a coin of multiple uses, according the wind blew. And this film suggest it briefly, although spiced with doses of that bitter humor so typical of Belmondo, the iconoclast personage by excellence, who was born and grew up under the French New Wave principles of irreverence and total disrespect for the elemental rules of authority. (Breatless, Pierrot le fou seem to confirm it.)

By the way, Georges Lautner directed a formidable film in the middle sixties with Jean Gabin that you should to search "Le pacha"

A film that deserves major attention from all of us.
September 24, 2007

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