Mein Onkel, der Gangster

This is a great comedy where everyone knows his work and do it perfectly. There's something of the cartoon in the direction. It's interesting that's this movie of 1963 is still funny today. George Lautner created with Michel Audiard a perfect melancholy remedy.

What is so special about this movie ? Its density... It lasts about two hours, and you don't have any time to breathe, because of the intelligence, and the spirit of every quote. It is a shame that there are no exemples of quotes from it on this site, it would make you laugh just to read them. Under the appearance of a classic dark detective movie, it is one of the funniest comedy ever made. The only thing is that, to keep the atmosfear, you ought to see it in original version (french). But, for Audiard and his humor, for Launtner and his inspired direction, and, most of all, for the actors (especially Bernard Blier) everybody in the whole world must see it at least once. One of the greatest french movies ever made (and God knows the quality of the french cinema) !

Les Tontons flingueurs is a real master piece! Audiard was a genius writing in "green language" (la langue verte, slang from 50's/60's full of sharp metaphor) its really irresistible.... Unfortunately this movie cannot be translated, too bad it deserve at least 10 oscars! for acting / senario / directing / etc... JP nyc

For a number of years now they have fed us movies about the adventures of mutant superheroes (o.k., I admit I have seen and enjoyed one or two of them). This was preceded by the surreal Schwarzenegger-Stallone-Van Damme-decade (also called the eighties), with action-flick actors whose muscle mass far exceeded their acting skills. Before that, there was Dirty Harry and a wild selection of anti-heroes of all sizes, shapes and colors. But when, exactly, was it, that real men disappeared from the screen? The event that caused the extinction of such dinosaurs as Lino Ventura, Jean Gabin, Lee Marvin, Humphrey Bogart and the like must have been the counter-culture of the sixties. But what a loss it caused. We had movie-stars who were real, gentlemanly (sometimes), cool, human and funny as well as ugly but sexy and we went and replaced them with a bunch of guys in a mask and cape (and I don't mean Zorro).

Luckily we all have our VCRs and DVD players and blockbuster and amazon and are able to enjoy movies like Les Tontons Flinguers, one of the funniest, coolest and yet silliest movies of all time. Every actor a character, every dialogue a gem, every scene a revelation about how to make it look easy. Go see this film before you even contemplate to watch Spiderman III!

After the Killer Tomatoes we now have the Killer Uncles (a more or less literal translation of an untranslatable movie). The level of word-play may be guessed at even by non-French speakers when the credits announce it is based on the novel 'To grisbi or not grisbi', which is, in itself, a nod to another novel and classic French movie 'Touchez-pas aux grisbi', with 'grisbi' in both cases being underworld slang for 'loot' in the sense of 'hot' money. Although it has all the trappings of a 'gangster' entry this is actually a comedy of bad manners involving two factions led respectively by Lino Ventura and Bernard Blier. While ex-wrestler Ventura has no problem acting tough Blier, arguably the best actor in the piece by light years and equally at home across the acting spectrum, plays it for laffs so that what we wind up with is a melange. Another French classic. 8/10