A Major Disappointment

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

A movie in which the older generation (Robert Hossein,Charles Denner,Nicole Courcel ,Raymond Pellegrin) meets the young one (a threesome :Marc Porel,pop singer Dani and a third one ,now completely forgotten);the experimented actors are at the top of the cast and credits whereas the rookies (although Porel had made several movies ,including a supporting part in Visconti's "Ludwig" but some of his scenes -an intimate one with the king-were cut) are relegated after the title of the film .And ,which is unusual:the final credits gives the three young people's weights! The screenplay was co-written by Marc Porel who was "bound to be" but never made it because of a new generation of actors (Depardieu,Dewaere)on the rise and of an addiction to drugs in the late seventies which led to his premature death (1983,age 34).He was the son of actress Jacqueline Porel and actor Gerard Landry and grandson of stage thespian Réjane.His screenplay remains in the early seventies zeitgeist (anti-police) but it avoids the post May 68 clichés.Unfortunately there are implausibilities:Hossein forces a safe in shopping mall where his young brother (Porel) and his pal are pursued by the police for another reason;although having a heart condition,Denner is a "senior police officer" (check the title) and however you must have a thorough medical examination if you want to join (or stay) in the police .For all that ,the movie is never boring and even sometimes interesting: the three young people who abduct a police officer in order to free older brother in jail are actually naive ,mindless,and act as though they 're teenagers ;their hostage-taking is doomed and its ending oddly predates -relatively speaking- that of "dog day afternoon"(Lumet ,1975).The character of the hostage (Denner ) is too underwritten and it is too bad:we learn that his wife left him and he 's got a mother who seems over-possessive ,which may explain the wife's behavior ;his relationship with his abductors is only skimmed over whereas it is obvious that they are all immature persons ( we learn that the girl is pregnant by one of the boys ,but it does not affect the plot at all;nobody hints at it after the revelation)

A group of petty hoodlums kidnap a police officer in order to get release of the gang's chief's brother. The brother in question is a lonesome burglar who has just been caught by the police during his action.The kidnapped officer's chief - the commissioner - is played by Raymond Pellegrin, and the burglar under arrest is played by Robert Hossein.What is interesting in this story is that, in 1966, there was a film called "Brigade Anti-Gangs" in which the same Raymond Pellegrin played a professional robbers gang leader caught by the Homicide Squad - lead by Robert Hossein - and a group of petty thugs kidnapped the commissioner's brother in oder to get the discharge from jail of Raymond Pellegrin, father of the gang of thugs's leader's fiancée...So, in both films, Pellegrin and Hossein have reversed characters.This is a desperate movie with of course a sad ending.