Largo Winch

Forget Neo and Bourne and all those half-baked made up modern heroes. They only look 12 year-oldish to please the wide audience of geeks that want to be their heroes. Since they cannot be Rambo or McClane or even Indiana Jones, Hollywood allowed a bunch of fakes that have no beard and yet fulfill teenagers wishes to see something that looks very much like an action flick.

However, their " action set-pieces " are just painful to watch and any girl may challenge their masculinity without question. This explains the recrudescence of oldies on our silver screens over the past few years. For better ( Rocky, Rambo ) or worse ( Die Hard 4 - where John McClane, brace yourselves.... had no beard !! )

I say it is high-time a new hero walked up and put their reign to an end. This " Largo Winch " movie is far from perfect, and perhaps too predictable at times, but at least Tomer Sisley delivered a very promising performance as an action-hero. And the only one time where he was weakened is when Mélanie Thierry shaved his beard ! I rest my case.

I didn't know it when I entered the theater room, but this might be the movie I've been waiting for a decade. For the first time in France since Belmondo, can a movie be both well- crafted and rooted in B-genre without blushing over its performance. In the meantime all we had to chew on was either a gigantic pile of dung or something too restricted to reach a wider audience... In other words it was " Le Pacte des Loups " or " Dobermann " ( I like Dobermann, mind you )... I believe " Largo Winch " has what it takes to be both popular and quality film-making.

I exited the theater room very pleased, and hungry for more.

Who doesn't know Largo Winch in the France-Belgium-Luxemburg trio (the three countries where the French "BD" or "Bandes Dessinées" are massively published) ? 18 years after the publication of the first comic book, which is itself an adaptation of a series of novels, it HAD to be adapted on screens. After a first - and failed- attempt with a TV show, the real thing begins.

First of all, and that's what most of the fans didn't get, the goal of this movie is not strictly to adapt the comic book series. Some essential parts, characters and actions of the original are missing. The movie itself offers an alternative and more modern version of the series. As a 1st class-fan of the comic book, I must confess I was nicely surprised. The actors are good, so is the scenario, though it might seem too fast. I thus recommend this movie to all those interested by financial/political thrillers, but it is clearly not an alternative to James Bond or Jason Bourne series as I could read over the internet.

This movie is a real mixed big. On the other hand it's one great looking and well directed movie, with a pleasant pace and some good action but on the other it's being a real average one with its story and suffers from some weak acting as well.

It's actually a movie based on a Belgian novel- and comic-book-series. And it's not really hard to see why they wanted to turn it into a movie-series as well. It has a very typical movie style and way of storytelling to it, that reminds you of movie-series such as the Bourne Identity and James Bond ones. It has a thriller type of plot, hot women, plenty of action and hand-to-hand combat and some exotic locations as well. Yet as a movie this one does not really work out quite successfully. Also financially it was a disappointment but that didn't prevent them from making a sequel, with the poetic title "Largo Winch II", in 2011, which was not much of a success either. So it seems that the series is already over before anybody had really heard about it, unless some big Hollywood studio decides to pick it up and turn it into a movie-series, since the potential is all definitely still present in it.

It's a movie in which a secretly adopted son has to proof his legitimacy, in order to take over his murdered father's company, that is worth billions and prevent it from falling in the wrong hands of some shady business people. Doesn't sound like the most interesting perhaps and you're right to think so. It's mostly being a Industrial espionage thriller, with backstabbing characters and ones with double agendas, with some action thrown in it to spice up things. It just isn't really the most exciting concept to begin with and besides, the movie its story offers little new or surprising really. It all has been done before and better as well. It's all quite predictable, also in the way it's progressing.

But the film-makers didn't seemed to be stopped in their ambitions to still create a great movie, despite of its story. It's a real slick looking movie, with a great visual style to it. They also handled the action really well, with some good camera-work and nimble editing. I'm a fan of some good old fashioned hand-to-hand action and this movie has plenty of that. Really, I can't say anything bad about the directing approach of this movie. It also provides the movie with a pleasantly fast pace, which ensures that the movie, despite of its story, won't ever start to bore you.

And the movie also needed a fast pace, since it seemed to be covering lots of ground. It's set in many different countries, at many different places, with many different people. Yet they managed to fit it all into a 100 minutes short movie. It might cause you to loose track at times though. I mean, it's quite hard to understand at times why our main character is suddenly in a different country or how he got there in the first place.

But something that really truly brings this movie down is its acting. Most of the actors really got poorly cast in this and seem to belong on TV or soap operas only really. Kristin Scott Thomas is an exception and Benedict Wong also does a decent enough job but the rest were really struggling to get their lines out convincingly. Perhaps this was also partly due to it that most characters have to speak in many different languages. The movie mostly consists out of French, English and Serbian dialog, while some of the actors themselves aren't even French, English or Serbian. And hearing a French person utter some English words just never really sounds convincing. The lead actor Tomer Sisley was also really struggling with this and only seemed to be in his element during the action sequences.

Not a great movie by any means but still worth giving a go when you have run out of anything else to watch.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I'm not aware of "Largo Winch" as a comic book (or is it graphic novel? I actually don't know), but I have to admit, hearing about an agent/hero movie, I did expect quite something different, than what I actually got.

While it was startling to watch this at first, it was nice watching this move along. You could never really tell where it would go (some twists are foreseeable, but in general, you can never really say, were it will end up going). A more than stellar performance from the lead actor and a really good support cast, make this an enjoyable watch. Not as action packed as some might hope or expect for a movie like that, but a really good mixture.

Only been maybe 4 days since i saw it and i've already forgotten the majority of it...The Heir Apparent won't be the most memorable film you've ever seen...but it was a well done enough action film of the "old school" french variety that will play very nicely on TV in years to come. Sleek enough to hold your attention and telling a story that doesn't insult your intelligence but won't really tax it either--the movie works well enough while its going, but once its over you'll either have trouble believing what you just saw, or you won't really care what you just saw--you'll just wanna see another movie asap.

Requiring a daring man of action to save the day but really just a continuing series of action sequences barely held together by a continuing storyline (ironically not unlike district b-13 which while an awesome movie is much much more of an example of "new school" french action film that's more in vogue right now.) The Heir Apparent is supposed to be more of an old school french action movie--like this could've easily been made with jean paul bellmondo in the 70's.

Largo Winch is the adopted heir to the CEO and founder of this gianormous company--when the ceo is found dead--its up the adopted heir to find out why, who, when, and if possible save the rest of the company. (Largo is a guy who loves breaking out of places--you see him as a kid running out the window of his bedroom--he hates being cooped up in one place...naturally a break out of jail sequence is included here, but with the nice twist that largo really really doesn't want anyone to help him with it....he's also apparently fiercely independent which just makes you wonder why he's doing what he's doing but no matter.) Anyways the bulk of the plot is basically Largo being recruited by the board of the company to do whatever he can to keep the company from being swallowed up by its main competitor. (this requires basically getting the majority of stock in the company back from the guy who owns the competitive company, but of course there's so much more to that then just going up to the guy and making him hand over the shares of stock) That's really all you need to know---anything else is stuff that comes up throughout the story that you just kinda roll your shoulders and go with--otherwise you'll have too many questions and to question what's happening here is besides the point.

Some of the action scenes are pretty cool...and the lead actor has an appealing what me worry? attitude that matches the tone of the movie perfectly. The reversals and double reversals that happen throughout the movie don't really add anything besides obstacles for the main character to hurdle over--but hurdle them he does, and well. Kirsten Scott Thomas appears but adds nothing except maybe a sense that something significant is supposed to be happening here, but its pretty clear its not. Ummmm the movie was entertaining enough--like it was fun to watch, but after an hour or so it gets kind of dull, like you start to wonder what the point is, why is Largo Winch so perfectly willing to be used by his father's board members when he himself has no interest in running the company at all anyways---there are flashbacks of him talking to his father that are meant to give depth to largo's character but only serve to remind us that we could be watching a much better movie if Largo could just somehow get out from his father's company's shenanigans. Anyways--it was an OK movie--but there were hints that it could've been something more. As it is its not bad, its actually pretty fun to watch but i'll prob forget i saw it in a day or two.