Without Apparent Motive

In the city of Nice, in the beautiful and sunny French Riviera, a sniper cold-heartedly assassinates four people in less than 48 hours. There isn't an obvious connection between the victims, but since they are all upper-class society members, chief-commissioner Carella senses a lot of pressure to catch the killer fast and to prevent further murders from happening.

It's been such a long since I watched a good old-fashioned, authentic giallo! Okay, so "Without Apparent Motive" is French instead of Italian, and a sniper rifle isn't exactly a traditional giallo murder weapon, but still I feel it qualifies as a bona fide giallo! After all, many delicious trademarks are well-represented, like the convoluted whodunit plot, a mysterious but merciless killer, a struggling police commissioner and many gorgeous women. Dominique Sanda, Carla Gravina and especially Stéphane Audran look lethal and incredibly seductive in their roles.

Although named "Without Apparent Motive", the assassin certainly has a motive for the murders he/she commits, and the gradual and suspenseful revelation of the motive is definitely the strongest quality of the movie. Trintignant plays in his very own typical love-or-hate-him style. I always wonder if he just acts arrogant, or really is arrogant. The locations and scenery are amazing, the great Ennio Morricone wrote another fantastic score, and many sequences are masterfully photographed.

Good solid thriller with fine central performance from Jean Louis Trintignant and very decent score from Morricone. Taught, interesting, involving and amusing from start to finish this good looking film has much to offer including some strange casting and an understated but sleazy background.

Erich Segal, writer of Love Story and person responsible for the screen play of Yellow Submarine(!) plays an off the wall astrologer and ex-wife of Trintignant and then wife of Chabrol turns up with bulging bust looking extremely sexy. Singer Sacha Distel is another surprising performer and does well as a TV presenter. The action takes place in and around Nice and more particularly around its harbour as a sniper begins to kill, seemingly at random, or 'Without Apparent Motive'.

I had seen this film in a cinema, years ago, when I was a youngster. Now, I have bought the video in a 2nd hand shop, and...

I has been delighted again with:

a) The plot: good thriller about a snipper who kills several high society persons.

b) The actors: Jean-Louis Trintigant is superb as a policeman,engaged in a difficult case. And he runs top speed...

c) The music: Morricone's score is perfect. It goes along very well and underline top moments.

To summarize: highly commandable film.

I saw this for the first time recently aft reading a glowing review by Coventry.

Well, this movie is indeed a solid thriller with a good mystery.

The plot in short - A police detective investigates a series of unexplained killings of unconnected people by a mystery sniper. One of the victim is an ex girlfriend of the detective who tries very hard to find a missing link between all these murders. Though the detective have linked the victims to money laundering, narcotics and prostitution, nothing adds up to a motive for murdering them.

The movie has good locations n a decent musical score but the performances are top notch.

I like the short hair, slim babe, Carla Gravina.

Lemme check out more movies starring her.

... Nice (impossible to miss that title, hey Hugh and JJ?)

If Philippe Labro isn't a great film noir director like Melville or Corneau, his polars are however entertaining. There are some very fine scenes in "Sans Mobile Apparent", pop and sexy like an italian criminal movie. In fact, it's quite close to giallo, with a terrible secret surrounding the killings in that privileged town of Nice, but these killings are made with a rifle by a sniper. Philippe Labro was mainly a journalist and he covered the most well known sniper story, Kennedy's killing. Labro loved guns and rifles, we feel it in this movie.



What bothers me is that Labro shot that polar as a cinephile, giving Trintignant some Bogart gestures like Godard with Belmondo in "Breathless", and those few new wave quotes are rather painful to me, Trintignant's character should have been more worked, he is too much stereotyped, sometimes being too much without explanation. But the sulfurous 70s atmosphere is great, the girls are sexy (Audran, Sanda, Gravina) and master Morricone's score is sumptuous.

Philippe Labro must love "the Sniper" by Edward Dmytryk.