Pour la peau d'un flic

Sometimes we need to get reminded that even cheaply produced movies can be great fun. Alain Delon's Director Debut here comes as a thirteen in a dozen French "policier" flick. The difference is that the actors are obviously having great fun on the set while the movie is presented with a well mixed variety of Violence, fun and some smart lines.

Alain Delon is cool on camera and even behind the camera. A smart fun but further unmemorable film. Alain continued to direct his next to films as well (although only credited for le battant).

Pour la peau d'un flic is an inseparable part of my Delon movie collection.

Obviously I'll watch anything with Tyrone Power or Alain Delon, but even I surprised myself with this. And I enjoyed it! Of course.

First off, may I say again that if there's anything I hate it's dubbing. Here Delon sounded like Robert Conrad. Everyone spoke English with American accents although the film takes place in France.

Someone here saw it in French because when Delon is injured and screams, his secretary tells him Burt Lancaster would never scream like that. The person who reviewed it said the name used was Belmondo. I wish I'd seen it in French.

Ex-cop Choucas, now a PI, is presently working on an embezzlement case at a pharmacist's. Then Isabelle Pigot hires him to investigate the disappearance of her blind daughter, Marthe Pigot, who worked at a foundation for the blind. Police Inspector Coccioli urges him to drop the case. But Choucas doesn't.

Choucas not only witnesses a killing, but is nearly killed himself, wounded, fights off two men in his office, and then his secretary is abducted. It doesn't seem as if anyone wants him to find Marthe.

Most of this film is a routine PI film, but it has humor, some good action, a little romance, and a bang-up finale. Delon is so sexy - and he wears the tightest pair of jeans I've ever seen. In fact, here his body has matured and the jeans push up some skin...when he shows his secretary where he was wounded, his short is off; he pulls the jeans down a little and sucks in that gut for all it's worth. Just a little trivia: This was something they always taught actors who stood in profile, but they don't seem to do it any longer. Dick Powell turned down the TV show Richard Diamond because "I can't hold my stomach in for 28 weeks."

Anyway, an enjoyable film.

Despite some extreme violence (shootings at close range, rape of one of the main characters), there is a surprising amount of humor in this picture. I wonder if this was Delon's way of moving away from the sometimes humorless approach taken in his films with J-P Melville. It also features a nice performance by a very young Anne Parillaud.

This is not a real review, it should be taken more as a collection of impressions on the film.

Very simple film but at the same time very beautiful and intriguing. Classic detective story with the usual conspiracy stuff to pull the threads of this story which would like to be very convoluted but is quite simple even if with some small plot holes which make some passages complex to understand or even real forcing done just to make everything proceed otherwise it would have been almost impossible to continue. So all in all the film is very nice, it's a shame about the small plot holes but you can get over it by looking at the film as a whole.

Ex-cop is after a drug pusher gang. Completely average thriller starring and directed by Alain Delon. If you don't feel like losing or winning anything, watch this film. A short cameo by beautiful French actress Brigitte Lahaie might get many a heart pumping. Apart from that, the movie isn't too exciting. At least it's not really boring.