"Peur sur la ville" was meant as a big-budget showcase for the talents of Jean-Paul Belmondo, both as an actor and as a stuntman. (Belmondo was a fine, versatile athlete.) The movie certainly delivers and so does Belmondo. It is a stylish, wildly exciting police/action movie peppered with fights and pursuits. Lovers of Paris can amuse themselves by putting names on the various locations. The famous subway pursuit, worth the price of admission by itself, has never been bettered.
The movie includes some beautifully ironic scenes, such as an unstable lunatic listening in to a live, publicly broadcast psychiatric analysis of his most intimate problems. And of course there's an interview with his dear grey-haired mother saying that he was such a sweet little boy...
Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the part of a macho police commissioner forced to pursue two dangerous criminals at once, sometimes literally so. One of the said criminals is a professional gangster, the other one is a sexually warped madman who dislikes women with a lively love life. Calling himself Minos, after the infernal judge of hell, the madman goes around punishing sin - or, as the case may be, "sin" - with an ever increasing gusto. He is cleansing the world through righteous violence, so why should he stay his hand ? (Congratulations to Adalberto Maria Merli for a remarkably chilling performance.) It is a pretty safe bet that some of the real-life monsters darkening our streets work on the same ideological principles.
Fine, unusually nervous and disquieting music by the great Ennio Morricone.
The movie includes some beautifully ironic scenes, such as an unstable lunatic listening in to a live, publicly broadcast psychiatric analysis of his most intimate problems. And of course there's an interview with his dear grey-haired mother saying that he was such a sweet little boy...
Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the part of a macho police commissioner forced to pursue two dangerous criminals at once, sometimes literally so. One of the said criminals is a professional gangster, the other one is a sexually warped madman who dislikes women with a lively love life. Calling himself Minos, after the infernal judge of hell, the madman goes around punishing sin - or, as the case may be, "sin" - with an ever increasing gusto. He is cleansing the world through righteous violence, so why should he stay his hand ? (Congratulations to Adalberto Maria Merli for a remarkably chilling performance.) It is a pretty safe bet that some of the real-life monsters darkening our streets work on the same ideological principles.
Fine, unusually nervous and disquieting music by the great Ennio Morricone.