|
Le Magnifique
[Image]
1973; color
Directed by Philippe de Broca
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jacqueline Bisset, Vittorio Caprioli, Hans Meyer & Monique Tarbès
|
|
Not that any of you care about the trivialities of my life, but the Kommandant and I have a membership with Green Cine; it's essentially just like Netflix, except they feature more "genre" titles. Anyway, I bring this up because it was the source of this DVD rental. To backtrack further, he must have put it in our queue at some point; for reasons only known to him. (And remaining unknown to us all; I asked him what made him decide he wanted to rent it when it showed up here and he couldn't remember.) Nonetheless, since we had a similarly themed DVD scheduled for review this week we decided to give it a whirl, while we were still in a secret agent frame of mind, and both agreed it was worthy of mention here. Seeing as how I couldn't follow either of the movies on the Dark Sky DVD, it was easy to choose who was reviewing what. Le Magnifique wasn't easy to follow either (for reasons that will become more clear as the review progresses) but it's not really the kind of movie that needs to be followed to be enjoyed. If that makes any sense. The festivities kick off with a totally memorable sequence featuring a sleazy looking bad guy in a phonebooth being hijacked - the entire booth is literally plucked off of the ground by a helicopter bearing one of those mechanical arms a la those machines in bowling alleys that let you pick up a giant plastic comb or harmonica - and then dumped, phonebooth and all, into the ocean. Only to be freed moments later by properly wetsuited henchmen and forced into some sort of cage contraption with one very hungry, and angry, looking shark. Who, of course, attacks him mercilessly; turning the ocean red with sleazy looking bad guy blood. Don't get too attached to his storyline though because a few moments later we're transported into some underground cave of dubious use… and then moments after that, transported up through a manhole to city streets. Along the way we learn that the planet is in grave danger and only one man, secret agent Bob St Clair, can save it. Two men agree to call him, and do so. He's in Baghdad you see, on another assignment. But he agrees to stop what he's doing (nonchalantly killing infidels while taking phonecalls) and help save the world. Moments later, he's deplaning and having hushed conversations with men on the runway. Even if you haven't been able to follow the plot too much, don't worry. Jaqueline Bisset is coming up soon and her beauty translates into any language; defying even the blurriest subtitle. Plus, soon after that, all of this whole storyline will go completely gongwipdu when the viewer learns that Bob St. Clair is not in fact a real live secret agent but a character in a series of action novels, one who bears a stiking resemblance to a writer whose claim to fame is writing action novels about suave secret agents. Oh and guess what? This writer guy meets up with a woman who is also Jaqueline Bisset… uh, I mean, looks just like Jaqueline Bisset. Curious! What is fact and what is fiction can only be assertained if you can survive to the end of the film. (And even then it's kind of dicey.)
—Bunny
|
|
