Le solitaire

Jacques Deray,who recently died, made several commendable works ,even if he never made a masterpiece:"la piscine" "un papillon sur l'épaule" or in his latter days "un crime".

But "le solitaire" has nothing going for it:here Deray is Belmondo's drudge,trying to direct a star who overplays and who single-handedly gets rid of the villains and even the treacherous cops.They added a child's character (Belmondo's godson whom he takes in after his father's death )to sweeten the violence ;the brat is subject to some gaffes concerning Godfather's love affairs.This is supposed to provide the poor screenplay with a comic relief.

The film wasn't even a commercial success in France which had begun to have enough of these cops and robbers flicks

The 80s were a decade when the great actor Jean Paul Belmondo produced one action film after the other. Some were good, some not. This one was marketed as The Professional II in some countries, ludicrous because the professional dies in part 1. But it shows the main issue: the film has no real identity. It is a string of action scenes around a basically non existing storyline. I keep confusinv it with the better Le Marginal because they are so similiar. Both films have the same director and partially the same actors. This film is essentially painting by numbers: which elements do we need for a generic Belmondo film. Having said that Belmondo is probably the only person in the world who can make a Peugeoz 505 look cool.

Jean Paul Belmondo takes his "Dirty Harry" persona deep into the heart of eighties fashion, putting off a planned early retirement to the Carribean in order to track down the man who killed his partner. Only in France could a Police Superintendant get away with wearing the bright yellow sports jacket Belmondo wears here (or could he?) and his detective team are even worse, looking like sartorial escapees from a bad episode of Miami Vice. Outside the office Belmondo still favours the black leather jacket though, and the action is still pretty gritty, but backs off a bit from the dizzy heights of Le Marginal. And this time Belmondo does it by the book in the end, bringing the murderer to justice and resisting the urge to blow him away, despite being presented with the opportunity (excuse?) of favourable circumstances in which to do so with a clear concience. Perhaps the attitude was toned down to avoid further criticism from the liberal press of his vigilante stance in that earlier movie, rather like when the original "Harry" made some adjustments in his second outing in order demonstrate that he wasn't a complete red neck? However a Pug is no substitute for an armour plated Mustang!

This film is really bad even for 80s Belmondo standards. Story? None. Belmondo is looking for his friends' killer and chases cars, beats up and kills people in the process. At one stage or other the director seemed to have noticed that this wouldn't fill 90 minutes and added the character of a child. So all in all it seems like a tough and nasty version of a 60s Eddie Constantine film. It is interesting though that if you watch the film closely you'll notice that props and cast also feature in some other 80s Belmondo movies. The overall impression is that nothing really seems to fit story wise as well. The whole film seems to be made up of odds and ends. In Germany the film was called The Professional 2- a bit pointless given the fact that the original professional actually dies in the first part.

Belmondo as always with his witty expressions, cool and tough attitude and a fight or cascade or two in between, is on the loose after an insane killer back in Paris, two years after the latter killed one of his partners. His ways are not conventional, but it works. Goes after the underworld to get what he wants, however he has to go over the rules of his boss, and has to take care in-between of his former partner's son, an orphan, who has sometimes his ways to keep his guardian off pretty girls...

Worth the watch for French police movie fans...