Half a Chance

First, the bad news: Vanessa Paradis has announced her intention of returning to the screen. The good news is even she can't ruin this divertissement. Patrice Leconte doesn't like to repeat himself and he clearly decided it was time he climbed aboard the 'Our Man Flint/Matt Helm' bandwagon and laid a spoof thriller on us. The movie is referential to the nth degree because audiences are supposed to have seen or at least be very much aware that Delon and Belmondo enjoyed a mega smash some thirty years ago with 'Borsalino' in which they played Marseilles-based hoods. Those who know and dug the original will feel a frisson when the Borsalino 'theme' strikes up, those who don't won't care either way. The plot, such as it is, hinges on the Paradis character and Oh, how much better it would have been without this Goldie Hawn look-alike and play alike - all big round saucer eyes and the galloping cutes which is calculated to make cases of male arrested development roll over and play dead. Here she plays a car thief just out of the slammer after her dear old mom has gone to the big jump lead in the sky but not before leaving a cassette tapping either Delon or Belmondo as the biological father of Paradis. So, off she goes to find them, via a boosted car which just happens to belong to the Russian mafia who are not best pleased. She locates both Delon and Belmondo who are more or less forced to team up and take on the mafia - that's right, two over-the-hill hard men against god-knows-how-many nasty men. It's not all blowing up casinos and throwing heavies off cliffs cos in between we get lotsa laffs - think Duke Wayne and Bob Mitchum in 'El Dorado' and you're getting there. This is French so even the mayhem is done stylishly. Go see, enjoy. 8/10