Das Wespennest

The late Philippe Labro was a very unusual, exceptional film maker from France. He gave us L'HERITIER and the terrific L'ALPAGUEUR - both Sam Peckinpah and Jean-Pierre Melville's tribute - so, with this thriller, political thriller, we could expect the best. During the early eighties, Claude Brasseur was at his peak, especially in crime films, remember LA GUERRE DES POLICES. Philippe Labro was very easy for such political tales, he was so kind of Alan Pakula, He - Labro - who was a journalist, in charge to cover John Fitzgerald Kennedy visit in Dallas in November 1963. You know what I mean...This film was written by Jean Patrick Manchette, and we find here his true trademark. It could have been written by Jean Laborde too, a political thriller screenwriter - MORT D'UN POURRI, ADIEU POULET. Anyway, Labro had always been more or less under the American cinema, but in the good way, with the French touch. Good and solid French thriller. Some terrific scenes, such as this one, in the elevator. Very surprising in a French eighties film. For this eighties flick, there was not the neo punk atmosphere, in the awful Gilles Behat's style. Those two hired killers are terrific, they nearly steal the show. And this poor so beautiful brunette against which those two killers will persist so far...Yes, this thriller saves us unpredictable little scenes and schemes.

A lot of people regard this film as being run of the mill and stereotypical. I tend to disagree. What happened was that Labro directed a very classical dark series 40s film with scerwball elements in early 80s France. So needless to say that he uses motives from the dark series as opposed to stereotypes. Martin Griffon is very much a dark series hero but particularly in the original French version he is also very Gallic (up to the point of caricature), a slob who coughs up phlegm. Essentially he is Columbo on acid which works and is very funny. The film itself is complex, full of deceit and corruption but not as confuse as classic dark series films. I actually find the story fast paced and original and the characters are intriguing and played by excellent actors. Gabrielle Lazure's character adds a touch of screwball comedy and Dayle Haddon as love sick dominatrix is excellent. So the film works on many levels: it's full of suspense, romantic (in the meaning of having a knight looking for his holy grail: the truth), funny, elegant (particularly the dialog)and well acted. There is Brasseur, born to play the hard nosed copper, the gorgeous Gabrielle Lazure, legends Jean Claude Braily & Jean Louis Tritingnat and the unfortunately underrated Dayle Haddon, who used to be a Disney actress until she decided to strip off for Playboy in the 70s. The also has a terrific soundtrack. And watch out for the character called Inspector Gomez- this actor must have played a cop in every French film I have ever seen. Sadly director Labro never had the impact in the film industry he should have had which was largely due to the fact that he went into management and later suffered from depression which rendered him unable to work for a long time.