Le passager

The last time I saw this was in high school on the last day of term when you were allowed to watch a movie in class. We were looking forward to watching something like the Karate Kid when one of our classmates, Murphy, excitedly whipped out this tape THAT HE HAD BROUGHT IN SPECIALLY - this film, Caravan to Tedium. To our utter dismay our Geography teacher put it on and the class spent a double period thoroughly disenjoying themselves watching this Alastair Maclean snoozefest - all except Murphy that is, who was lapping it up big time. When our class wasn't collectively daydreaming about shoving Murphy's face into a vat of pig excrement we endured PG rated thrills and Wednesday afternoon level excitement as Charlotte Rampling and David 'personality' Birney run around dodging bullets while attempting to achieve something tiresome. I watched it again today, so the question is, was it better 34 years later? No, not really. Murphy if you're out there, this unfortunate event may have happened in 1986 but you're still a bell end for instigating it.

The existing reviews for this are useful and I'd agree with pretty much everything that people are saying. As someone who finds Alistair MacLean books and films a guilty pleasure, the decision to film on location and work in a little-documented actual festival gives the film a certain atmospheric appeal. However the subsequent commitment to using this footage appeared to hamper the creative team's ability to tell a coherent story. The frequent use of cutaways and montage such as the bullfight with the killing of De Croyter's daughter, suggests that the availability of the documentary footage drove the film's structure and so effectively killed opportunities to create suspense with more carefully constructed shots. Perhaps more unfortunate is that the Director constructing the shots was the hapless Geoffrey Reeve who managed to increasingly mess up three MacLeans. In addition to Vaccares, he directed the flawed, though undoubtedly watchable, 'Puppet On A Chain', noting however that the memorable boat chase was shot by Don Sharp. Then after 'Vaccares' he helmed the appalling 'The Way to Dusty Death' which confirmed that he was totally out of his depth as a Director in the industry. Writer, Paul Wheeler should also carry some responsibility for the eventual cinematic carnage. Maybe Reeve's TV work was better but he and the writer really didn't haven't a clue how to build suspense and handle this sort of material and as a result, a decade of exciting Alistair MacLean branded entertainments started to lose credibility with audiences. Starting here.

Despite the fact that it has enough action. But the whole action is around the character "who has to get to the USA" (Zuger) and is repetitive from beginning to end. Something totally crazy, we will never know why Ferenc The Killer (Serge Marquand) had to shoot that man in the car in the first two minutes of the film. Charlotte Rampling is young and beautiful but her role is as if she is not even in the film. 3 very good actors, Françoise Brion, Marcel Bozzuffi and Michel Lonsdale, are wasted in a banal story with many flaws. Watch for Graham Hill, the great racing pilot, as the helicopter pilot at the end!

It's weird, this film; you get the impression that the makers of this snooze-fest spent more time in the local bars than on set. In fact, it's a surprise not to see Harry Alan Towers' name on the credits; it certainly has the flavour of one of his tax-shelter productions but here the motivation behind the project seems to be for all involved to enjoy a prolonged stay in Provence. Despite the fact that the film is supposed to take place all over the region, Les Baux and the area around it stands in for almost everything.

David Birney makes for a spectacularly colourless hero - as Michael Lonsdale says at one point "you're a walking cliché". What Lonsdale is doing in this is anyone's guess. For some reason, the most interesting character, played by Rampling, is sidelined, whereas, regardless of the book, she should have been the central figure because she clearly has the skill to carry the movie (which would have been dull anyway, but at least we'd have got more of something pretty to look at).

All in all a pointless affair that is only worth watching to see how action-less an action movie can be.

It's a shame that such a lame plot should be hung on such picturesque locations, with some documentary style reportage shoved in for extra length. A shorter film may have held the tension a little more, and a more charismatic lead may not have mangled his lines so much. The female lead also, was not allowed to do enough resulting in a pretty but boring affair. It builds towards the end but the lead actor's own redemption is too little too late and should have been revealed earlier in the film. Not awful, just a pity. Unexciting but nice enough to grace TV schedules of the early hours.