Better Late Then Never

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 terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

"Canicule" leaves so many questions unanswered. Was the relationship between Lee Marvin's character and the retarded farm boy supposed to be touching, comical or teeth-grindingly stupid? Was the reason Tina Louise disappeared entirely from the film because the editor was a drunken ham-fisted film school reject? What is Tina Louise's character even doing in this film? Did the director just fly around in a helicopter shouting "Wheeeeee!" the entire shoot while the rest of the crew sat around snorting coke and going 'Zut Alors! Zis New Wave film making - it is fantastique!' or something? So many questions...Okay, long story short. Lee Marvin, dressed as a 1930's gangster, robs an armored car and shoots a bunch of cops and a pre-schooler, then lams it to the French countryside where he's captured by a repulsive bunch of inbred French rednecks. Sound interesting? It isn't. The cops overfly the farm about a ga-zillion times looking for Lee, each shot lovingly filmed from another helicopter (the one where the director was yelling "Wheeeeee!") (or "Le Wheeeeee!" since he's French) but can't find him because he's always in the barn setting fires or strangling nymphomaniacs or whatever.But here's the depressing part. Ready? Despite being a film built solely around the image of Lee Marvin standing around in a wheat field, "Canicule" would be considered a cinematic masterpiece today if it were made by Quentin Tarantino and starred Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie. It wants to be parody but rarely rises to the level of stick-figure cartoon, in other words the perfect film for a society of porn obsessed violence addicts like the US."Wheeeee!"

***SPOILERS*** After a blotched robbery with half a dozen people, including an eight year old boy, getting killed American gangster Jimmy Cobb, Lee Marvin, is on the run, with the French Police hot on his tail, in the French countryside with the couple of million dollars he heisted.Burying the money in a nearby wheat field Jimmy doesn't realize that he's been spotted by 13 year-old Chim,David Bennent, who's got big plans for himself in becoming the towns next Godfather. Drgging up the money when Jimmy was still on the run Chim replaces it with a bag full of rocks and uses most of it to party around town, like drinking booze smoking cigars and carousing around with hookers, thus throwing suspicion on himself. Back at Chim's family's farm where Jimmys hiding out the man of the house, I'm not quite sure what relationship he has to Chim, the piggish and coarse Horace-Victor Lanoux-is busy abusing, whom I assume is Chim's older sister, his wife Jessica,Miou-Miou. It's in this strange and dangerous environment that the fugitive Jimmy Cobb finds himself in.It doesn't take that long for Horace's family that includes his always drunk brother Socrate, Jean Carmet, and nymphomaniac sister Segolene, Bernadette Lafont, to discover Jimmy and hold him hostage until the police arrive with them getting a fat reward for his capture. It's later when the greedy Horace decides to get Jimmy to tell him where he hid the millions of dollars he stole, and keep it all for himself, that things begin to get a bit crazy at the Horace Farm. Crazy enough to have Jimmy want not only to be capture but even end up dead in order to avoid being stuck with the Horace crew! Which to Jimmy would be a fate far worse then death itself!A number of side plots in the movie have to do with Horace and his wife Jessica trying to use Jimmy as a scapegoat in crimes that they themselves plan and end up committing. This in both Horace & Jessica knowing that that the fugitive from the law Jimmy, not them, will end up being blamed for them. There's also the tragic domestic, or house maid, Gusta-Marguerite Muni-who's always being threaten by Horace to be sent to a nursing home. This in Horace knowing perfectly well that she's terrified of being sent there and would end up killing herself if she was. The movie soon get completely out of hand with Jimmy, the man on the spot, getting romantically involved with Jessica who's using him as a pasty or fall guy in the planned murder of her abusive husband Horace. This all leads to Jimmy ending up murdering, as well as being framed for murdering, at least another half dozen, not including those killed in the bank holdup, persons by the time the movie is finally over!***SPOILER ALERT*** With the money gone and him having no hope for escaping the police dragnet Jimmy's only hope now is to get himself killed and finally be put out of is misery. Even that wish on Jimmys part is in jeopardy with the Al Capone or John Gottie wannabe Chim, now calling himself Aniro De La Crouchie, wanting to capture Jimmy alive and become famous for doing it!As it turned jimmy did deny, by personally blowing his own brains out, Chim from taking him alive but it was fun loving Doudo Doudo, Joseph Mono, the grease monkey and all around handyman at the Horace Fram who ended up with all the stolen cash. The perpetually lucky Doudo Doudo came across the stolen money, after Chim dug it up and reburied it, and thus ended up not only leaving the crazy Horace place but moving into a swanky penthouse in Paris and ended up living happily ever after.

Canicule has the distinct aroma of tax write off and trip to France for Lee Marvin in one of his last and least films of his career.Marvin plays American bank robber Jimmy Cobb who is on the run and now in France. The French authorities want this guy bad, they're even armed to the teeth. The beginning is a homage to Sam Peckinpaugh and The Wild Bunch with a shootout on the Paris streets where a whole lot of people get themselves killed in a botched attempt to take Marvin.Lee's on the loose with the loot from a bank job that was obviously committed in America because it's in dollars as opposed to francs. But he manages to get to the Normandy countryside where he falls into the hands of a family of farmers who've got their own ideas about him and his loot and his reputation. And by no means is it unanimous.Canicule is a French attempt to make an American style gangster film and they're not bad at it when doing things like Lemmy Caution with American expatriate Eddie Constantine. This one could have used the real Sam Peckinpaugh however directing this mostly French cast of players with Lee Marvin and Tina Louise. The dubbing and editing is hardly first rate. Marvin is in bad health which the camera plainly shows.As another reviewer stated Gorky Park is a far better film. That and Death Hunt are the last two really great films Lee Marvin made.

This is essentially a trash film that luckily does not take itself too seriously. It is well aware of its nature as entertainment and uses themes familiar from such films as "Deliverance" and "The Hills Have Eyes" in a sort of parodic context.It features a family living in rural France where the father is a brutal and violent pervert, his brother is same but worse, the son (about 10) is following on the same track and the father's sister is a nympho. Key in lots of tasteless moments (the clubbering to death of two Swedish (topless) campers, the suicide of the grandmother when they threaten to take her to old folks' home, the spending spree of the 10 year old kid in a cathouse and so on)and what you have is a fairly entertaining exploitation picture with a European touch.You know whether you'll like it or not! Definitely not for the fans of Lee Marvin...