Un homme est mort

The great chase on the VENICE AMUSEMENT PIER allows an old Santa Monica resident like myself to see the old pier before it was demolished. For years it sat, rusted, half standing due to fire and neglect. It was on the Santa Monica and venice border. It was broken into many times, as it was a good location to fish off of, or to go lurking, if one were into checking out what people enjoyed decades earlier. The Beach Boys played in the pink building you see in the film. The piers below, where you see Ann Margaret, you see those piers in THE DOORS video, THE UNKOWN SOLDIER. Also, this pier was used in the last episode of the 1960's TV action series, THE FUGITIVE. Richard Kimble tracked down and caught the 'one armed man' in that abandoned pier.

"The Outside Man" is one of those films that I would classify as a "guilty pleasure." I first saw it as a child of eleven on the second half of a double bill with "Little Big Man" at a retro drive-in in 1974. This is exactly the type of film my parents would have walked out on in fifteen minutes, since my Dad is a strict law-and-order type and likes films where there are good guys and bad guys and the good guys win. Lucky for me, this film played FIRST, so they were stuck sitting through it. I, for one, loved it because it was fast-paced and action-packed (and very violent) and couldn't have cared less that everyone in it was a crook. (I still don't.) It's one of my favorite films of the '70's and remains one I watch again and again.

"The Outside Man"'s plot is simple: A French hit man (Jean-Louis Trantignant) travels to Los Angeles to kill a mobster. Upon completion of his assignment, he returns to his hotel to find he has been checked out and that his belongings (wallet and passport included) are gone. Upon leaving the hotel, he is ambushed by an American assassin (played with icy menace by Roy Scheider, a million miles from his "Jaws" sheriff), who has obviously been hired to kill him. After an exciting chase through the streets of L.A., and a brief respite in the apartment of a dippy widow and her smart-aleck son ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show"'s Georgia Engel and a very young Jackie Earle Haley), he contacts his boss and is told to find the boss's ex-moll Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret). He meets her in a topless bar and she agrees to help him get the hell out of Dodge. This sets up a series of chases and shootouts as she tries to help him leave town while he dodges Scheider's bullets.

Sure, this film is at times as trashy as it sounds. But it's also highly entertaining and has a top cast which also includes Angie Dickinson in the small role of the gangster's widow. In spite of the fact that he's playing a cold-blooded killer, Trantignant actually elicits a certain amount of audience sympathy and the mostly silent Scheider (who probably has five lines of dialog, total) is a hair-raising villain. Dickinson is appropriately shady and Engel at times very funny (and touching) as the victimized housewife. And then there's the eye-popping Ann-Margret, who I believe filmed this before her near-fatal Vegas accident: Her plunging neckline, blond wig and mini-dresses alone are worth the price of rental. Add at least two exciting extended chase sequences and a uniquely filmed shootout in a mortuary (where the mobster has been embalmed in a sitting position, cigar in hand) and you have a highly entertaining melodrama in which everyone eventually gets their comeuppance.

All-in-all, "The Outside Man" is a highly entertaining film lark from an era where films were actually distinguishable from each other, and didn't all look like yesterday's recycled trash. *** (out of *****)

This had all the makings for a first rate international crime action drama. There is a good premise, of a hit-man agreeing to off a powerful crime boss to pay off a debt, only to discover it was a set-up with himself marked for death, a first-rate cast, a "Shaft"-inspired score by Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand, and excellent location photography which captures the Los Angeles landscape. So why doesn't this film work? For one thing, it never settles on a tone, and it swerves between character study to crime drama and doesn't have enough of either. The character being studied is impossible to care about anyway, the crime aspects are never fully explored, and most the action scenes are mostly ordinary. Even the climactic shootout isn't all that exciting, in spite of happening in a clever location. The result is that the film is usually depressing. There are a few good scenes and the cast is more than up to the task. However, most of the actors are given little to do. In the lead, the great French actor Jean- Louis Trintignant does little more than glower or sulk, making this one of his less memorable performances. Ann Margaret is beautiful, but her role is merely set decoration. Georgia Engel steals the show as a ditsy housewife who innocently gets caught up in the double cross and violence, but she doesn't have that large of a role. The truth is, she's the only person who evokes any sympathy, with everyone else being either a vicious criminal, an inept cop, or an apathetic bystander. That wasn't an unusual situation in 1970's crime dramas, but it doesn't make for exciting viewing. Some people like this movie a lot, so if you're really interested, judge for yourself, but don't complain if you were also disappointed.

Being a native of Los Angeles, it's great a treat to see a overview of the city in 1973 supposedly from the plane to brings Trintignant. There are shots of "The Classic Cat", a club that no longer exists on Sunset Blvd. The chase scene filmed in Venice, CA, are also places that no longer exist as most of the development was still under construction. The music score is by Michel Legrand, whose "Umbrellas in Chernburg" is classic, here a little jarring, maybe intentional. Trintignant plays a hit man from France, who does commit cold blooded murder, so he's a bad guy. Roy Schneider, pre-Jaws, plays an even more gum chewing, sadistic killer after Trintignant.

Ann Magret, at this time, was having a difficult time having just recently lost her father in real life. She plays her part well, but it is unclear why her charactor would go out on a limb for Jean-Louis T., as his charactor treats her with sheer indifference. Angie Dickerson is a 70's babe that gives A.M. competition in the eye candy department.

The shoot out scene at the end of the movieis quite weird, the corpse in the funeral parlor displayed in a sitting position with cigar in hand and Trintigant's cohort being dragged by a hearse through the graveyard.

A 3 out of 5.

Very low key actioner with sprinkles of offbeat humor. French hit man does a job only to find the roles are reversed and he is now the target of another hit man. Trintignant is well cast as a man not only confused with his unusual predicament, but also with southern California culture. There's been many, many films done in Los Angeles, but the excellent location shooting seems to show you a whole new city. Although the film stays very true to it's unique form the downbeat ending could've and should've been avoided. Georgia Engle is a delight as a dumb housewife.