The Outside Man

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.

After a family tragedy, Jean-Louis Trintignant was invited by Jacques Deray to make this picture in America aiming for clear your mind aftermaths of sad happenings, actually his character wasn't a hitman properly, he just had debts on games at Paris and had to kill a great mobster at Los Angeles in exchange to be free doing this assignment, sadly after fulfilled his task another real hitman tries kill him before leaving Los Angeles.

Then came up the gorgeous Ann Margret a former owner of a burlesque night club to aid him got a passport to get back to Europe, he soon figures out that such returning won't ensure laissez-passer even in Paris, so he decides stay to settle the things chasing the mastermind that ordering his death.

It's criminally underrated by large majority at IMDB's members in so unusual French Polar, it's has enough action, chasing streets and mainly many twists on the clever plot, also to enhance the offering the producers exposing the sinful nightlife of California on those peppery burlesque environment, fantastic casting and mainly by the Ann-Margret's decollete as the whole shaped body, what a vision of heaven!!

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First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

"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 *****)

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.

A French hitman, Jean Louis Trintigant, is hired to kill a Los Angeles mobster. After carrying out his assignment, the Frenchman becomes the hunted, with Detroit hitman, Roy Scheider relentlessly in pursuit. The cast is very game, and includes Ann Margaret, Angie Dickinson, Alex Rocco, and Talia Shire in a small role. Eventually things start to crystalize as to the "why", and the Frenchman begins to turn the tables. Jean Louis Trintigant takes some getting used to as the sort of anti hero. His performance is extremely low key, which tends to cause the story to lose momentum at times. Nevertheless, the unpredictable script, superb Los Angeles photography, and skilled acting keeps "The Outside Man" interesting. - MERK