While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

I saw the movie for the first time when I was 22. Since then I've seen it at least a dozen times -- over a period of over 20 years, every time I find new things in it: friendship and love and "life is not fair" and there is nothing we can do about it except try to do our best. + 2 marvelous actors who, alone, a worth seeing the movie... Lino Ventura, as usual, a very forceful personality, and Bourvil, for once, is not in a comic capacity, two people from worlds apart and yet they come to form this unexpected and unlikely friendship because ultimately, they are the Good Guys in a world full with "model citizens" performing dirty tricks. The film is dynamic, it leaves you breathless

A strange film. Riddled with clumsiness: fight scenes with punches missing by a mile and ridiculuous Foley work using interior echo for outdoor action; people working as lumberjacks wearing clean shirts at the end of the day, etc. etc.Funny too that the actor Bourvil, best known as a comedian, comes across asslightly mean, taciturn and unpleasant in a role obviously written to be warm- hearted. An aging Lino Ventura is frankly embarrassing as the romantic lead,and his lazy gambit of instilling drama by lighting up yet another Gauloise or Gitane (count 'em!) should have been jumped on and stubbed out by thedirector. The plot seems to borrow hugely from American films, and there is little local flavour. The bizarre highlight is the gang of convicts letting their hair down on a fairground carousel, gaily tossing confetti at each other, followed by the dramatic denouement when one of the convicts refuses to let a rival have a turn on a fairground game! Zut alors!

The two main actors in this film, Lino Ventura and Bourvil could indeed lead the prospective viewer to actually believe he/she was in for something exciting. Erreur !! I'm sorry to say, at over 2 hours this really was one of the most laborious and soporific adventure films I have seen. Even the beauty of of the Vosges mountains and the lovely face of Marie Dubois can't save the day. The main problem is the plot, which is hopelessly limited. Bourvil returns to the Vosges mountains, in Eastern France to take over the sawmill run by his late father. One of the locals want's to buy out the said sawmill but Bourvil holds out on his own ( he's not a Norman for nothing !!! ). But he needs workers. Enter Lino Ventura and a friend, recently out of prison and looking for work. They get taken on by Bourvil and get other prisoners on parole to work there. This is not just kindess on the part of Ventura, he hopes to get one of his deadly enemies from prison to work there so that he can exact revenge and kill him.The blessed chap in question never actually turns up, we don't know why and Ventura never accomplishes his project. Bourvil ends up setting fire to the saw mill and throwing in the towel. This totally uninteresting little plot wastes 2 hours of your time and you really wonder where the scriptwriter was intending to go with all that. It's really a shame such great actors/actresses wasting their time on a corny plot like this.Picture quality is passable for mid sixties but I found the colors to be rather washed out and over whitish. Rather a shame when you know that the area in question ( I've been there myself and can vouch for its scenic beauty ) is so beautiful. After about 30 minutes of watching this film you begin to realize that the whole this is starting to s...a....g !! At the end, it just fizzles out and you wonder why you wasted two hours of your time on it. This is one I CERTAINLY won't have the courage to watch a second time !!

This is a typical excellent french movie with two of the best french actors : lino ventura and bourvil. The story is good, the acting is perfect and the atmosphere of the film is very pleasant; My advice : one of the best french adventure movies