Le solitaire passe à l'attaque

Ralph Habib's last effort (he was to die three years later);the very kind of movie which combines business (we've got a movie to make!)with pleasure (Spain is a very nice place to be).

Like so many drudges in the sixties,Habib jumped on the bandwagon and tried his hand at a James Bondesque movie."The lone one" is a French secret agent (Roger Hanin) .There's a "M" -gone when he's needed-,a Moneypenny called Brigitte who retrieves the situation (in a scene obviously borrowed from "Goldfinger" ),a Felix Leiter (portrayed by a cast against type Jean Lefèvre)and several "Lone one girls":one of them is a fair-haired girl,Sophie Agacinski ,who resembles pop singer Sylvie Vartan and who was famous in 1965 for her "Seule A Paris" miniseries.

As for the plot,it deals with a deadly weapon which is stolen and is to be sold to the baddies ;this screenplay is terribly mediocre.

A comic relief borrowed from Astérix :now and then,a couple of tourists mumbles something like "they're crazy,those Spanish".

A powerful bomb is stolen from a military unit and the magnetic KEY (a tape recorder that emits a certain sound that unlocks the bomb), that controls the lock falls into the wrong hands. French Secret Agente Roger Hanin is given the task of retrieving it and has only 48 hours to find it. He was hoping for a relaxing seaside holiday near Barcelona but ends up chasing bad guys who all double cross each other to get the key and are thus able to sell to the highest bidder. After some buildings are blown up and cars set on fire, they all end up in a car chase on an expressway. Certainly a fun movie to watch if you like Euro Spy films.

This entry in French/Spanish in the superspy category deals with some engineers belonging to a military organization are testing a new type of rays that disintegrate airplanes in the air. A foreign organization takes over the device whose key is rescued by the French secret service. Bersen, head of the organization, tries by all means to recover the key so he can sell it to a secret agent from another country. Fran and Robert, agents of the French services, try to seize the new artifact and the key. Meantime, the spies must recover a suitcase with a bomb and recording that can open the suitcase so that the bomb can be deactivated. Then the powerful bomb stolen and is set to explode in a populated area in less than 48 hours, unless French S. S. Agente, Roger Hanin can find and defuse it in time.

The film has some action, but it is regularly developed, without too much movement, although there are two chases, one in the muddy terrain around a factory, and on a highway with crashes included. Spanish-French co-production of intrigue and espionage Starring Roger Hanin, a French actor of Algerian origin who in the early eighties participated in many productions of this type. A handful of gadgets and several silly incidents make this Euro-spy marginal. Other than that, it's a fairly unremarkable European Bond imitation, mostly notable for having a somewhat sharper-than-usual sense of humor. Le solitaire passe à l'attaque(1966) belongs to ¨Eurospy" subgenre , a series of films produced in Europe between 1962 and 1969 that tried to take advantage of the success of James Bond and especially : ¨Dr No¨ , ¨From Russia with love¨,¨Thunderball¨ and ¨Goldfinger¨. One of the peculiarities of the "James Bond¨ rip-offs was wanting to imitate their model without ever having neither means , nor budget , turning to economy like most films of this sub-genre. The movie starts slowly like a conventional spy story , but once the hero goes into action, things get lively and the director lets loose by recycling some ideas already exploited in other movies. The script is obviously just a pretext for director Ralph Habib who does not hesitate to fit models and ideas of all kinds.

The valiant protagonist Roger Hanin gives a passable performance but without much effort playing a tough French secret agent who arrives in Barcelona in order to prevent the explosion of a bomb stolen by ambitious international contractors. Hanin was brother-in-law of former French president François Mitterrand. He had a prolific career as an actor and wrote two stage plays and even directed some films such as ¨Hell train¨, ¨Soleil¨ and ¨La Rumba. As an actor he stood out popularly as Agent Tiger, which he developed in several installments. Hanin starred al kinds of films with penchant for thriller and drama genres, such as ¨Les misérables , L'intrépide, Tony Arzenta , las Vegas 500 millones, Code Name: Jaguar, Secret agent Tiger, Le Tigre se parfume à la dynamite, Spies with Diplomatic Passports, Our Men in Bagdad, An ace and four queens, Maria Chantal versus Dr Kha¨, among others

Being a French/Spanish co-production, the film features various actors of these nationalities, such as the Spaniards Teresa Gimpera, Milo Quesada, the German nationalized Spanish Gérard Tichy Sophie Agacinski , Charles Millot. And special mention for the French Jean Lefebvre, Louis de Funes' partner in The Gendarme of Saint Tropez; as a novelty, the rather ugly Lefebre falls in love and stays with the pretty girl Sophie Agacinski. It displays a colorful cinematography showing sightseeing from Barcelona and surroundings fro the excellent cameraman Miguel Fernández Mila . The motion picture was mediocre but professionally directed by Ralph Habib (Escapade, Stowaway, The black chapel, La loi des rues). Rating: 4,5/10. Average , though with some passable moments.