GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Bene Cumb Noble Paris, beautiful women, small local cars... At times Africa: poor, wars, corrupted elite... Themes of love, betrayal, broken dreams are universal and fit into a spy and hit-man film as well. Belmondo is a real star, overshadowing others in every scene he is in; I would like to compare his character with James Bond - only in French.Music by Morricone is a real treasure, although it is somewhat similar to the background music from the Soviet cult series Seventeen moments of spring (1973).The ending is strange, however, I would have expected and preferred a more motivated one.

ElMaruecan82 A hit-man, a helicopter, an unforgettable climactic sequence, a, thriller, a music … It's sad that 90% of movie fans now remember "The Professional" as a great action/thriller film made by a French director named … Luc Besson, and featuring the acting debut of Natalie Portman, and Jean Reno as a professional hit-man protecting her from the claws of a demented cop played by Gary Oldman. I guess EVERYONE in America associates THIS title with THIS film, while in France, and probably in Europe, when people think of "The Professional", there's a beautiful melody instantly resonating in their mind, a penetrating score that conveys the fatality hanging over the shoulders of one of the greatest antiheroes of French Cinema: Joss Beaumont, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in his career's most defining role, and the notes I'm thinking of while writing these lines are certainly some of the greatest that ever enriched Cinema's musical memories, a sound made by the great Ennio Morricone. If you haven't seen the film and if you're unfamiliar with the music, I allow you to suspend the reading of this review, because it's so pointless compared to the beauty of "The Professional"'s score. And I implore you to go listen to it, before getting back to this useless assemblage of words.What is "The Professional", or who is he? I don't know if this really matters if you don't plan to watch the film. It's so simplistic in its premise that it can be compared to anything made before or after, like "The Day of the Jackal" or even the 1994's "Professional" after all: you have your traditional cat-and-mouse chase between a killer with a sense of honor, and the cops and politicians whose ambiguous motives make you inevitably root for their target. Manipulation? No, the film is simply above these considerations, when you watch it; you understand that it doesn't have no purpose else than to captivate you until a rewarding confrontation. It still has an average 80's B-movie feel, some campy acting, some visual and sound effects that need to be reconsidered, the blood looks like red paint, in fact, the form is as simplistic as the content. And the treatment toward women is exquisitely misogynistic in the purest tradition of James Bond films where even in the most honorable woman, there's something slutty waiting for the magnetic Belmondo, to exude itself, all the opportunities to expose some nude breasts or curvy legs are good, but for some reason, it suits the spirit of a film that doesn't embarrass itself with political correctness: these were other days where movies obeyed to some formulas that didn't depend on the public's reaction. Indeed, the script written by Michel Audiard, one of the most popular French writers, is a challenge for moral sensitivity, since nobody's spared : Africans, politicians, women, cops, there's a cloud of badness contaminating the air and spilling over all the characters, and in this environment where each works for his or her interest, all we can do is to root for the man who follows his instinct, his sense of duty, his honor.Joss Beaumont is the man who was paid to kill the President of a fictional African country, and was literally sold by his government. After two years, he's back to France, and determined to finish his job, even if the President became a friend of France. People are so banally corrupted that the very notion of hero and villain becomes pointless. There's a great line coming from the African head of state who tells Joss that 'it took France two revolutions and five republics to become a very debatable form of democracy, and he's supposed to do that in years?' During the disenchanted 70's when France was stricken by an economical crisis, the infamous "Giscard presidency", and when the public was disillusioned with the power of law, an icon had to incarnate this moral ambiguity between what is legal and is legitimate. Since his debuts with Melville, Belmondo was born to play likable outlaws and needless to say that "The Professional" was tailor-made for him.The movie has reached such an iconic status in France that it might catch off-guard some younger or foreign audience, because at first sight, there's something almost deliberately poor in the way it's handled until the cat-and-mouse aspect gradually turns more into a sort of chess game where Beaumont is so well-trained that he becomes a real mastermind, using the greatest tricks he learned, he even refers to chess by using the 'playing the whites' strategy: the attack. And naturally, there's always this feeling of everyone trying to anticipate the moves of the other, to which person he'll get, and what he'll do next. Beaumont's goal is clear: assassinating the President, and for cops: stopping Beaumont, by any means and for that job: there's the unflappable face of Robert Hossein, as Rosen, the man who made it personal: so calm, so scary that he's the perfect antagonist to the flamboyant and charismatic Beaumont.To conclude, whatever could be perceived as flaws is so archetypal of a certain breed of French cinema that it takes a sort of gourmet pleasure to appreciate it, especially today when, for the sake of realism, the macho man has turned into a sexual beast and when characters are all bland and particularly unlikable. Interestingly, one of the new generations actors who was inspired by Belmondo is Jean Dujardin and you can see how he inherited his mannerisms, this mix of charisma and flamboyance. There are some times where nothing can beat old-school cinema, because it was so damn serious but never took itself seriously.And the last five minutes are so breathtaking, that whatever flaws you may have pointed out, it totally redeems the film, especially thanks to the iconic score of Ennio Morricone. Simply put, "The Professional" is one of the best French films!

eyesour Hilarious 1981 Gallic mash-up of every comic schoolboy adventure story stretching back to Fanfan la Tulipe (Gerard Philipe, 1952), and taking in everything you can think of both before and since. A jolly payday for everyone involved, happily strolling through their parts with varying degrees of thespian competence, but not straining too hard, whether good or truly mediocre. It kept reminding me of other movies: Where Eagles Dare, Day of the Jackal, James Bond, the Bourne trilogy, Good, Bad, Indifferent, Gunfight at OK Sundown, North by Northwest, Charlie Varrick, Leon the Professional, Last King of Scotland, You Name It.Long Leone-type facial close-ups. Plenty of political incorrectness. Sadism, persecution, lesbianism, unconvincing fake punch-ups. Great car chase sequence, with Last Gasp Belmondo, looking leathery and cool, at the wheel, handling his own stunts in the spectacular setting at the Trocadero. Wow! Fabulous anti-Hollywood ending. Weird relationships of love and friendship --- something seminally continental about those. I really couldn't sort them out. Who was doing what to who, exactly? Highly watchable, but I'm suspending all critical faculties by giving it 6 out of 10. Is this rating system working again, yet?

Terrell-4 Josselin Beaumont (Jean-Paul Belmondo), agent for the Special Action Service, a shadowy French government agency, is sent to the African country of Malagasi to kill Colonel Njala, its president-for-life. Political considerations suddenly change and the assassination is called off. Instead of recalling Beaumont, his masters decide to betray him to secure a good relationship with the president-for-life. And the president-for-life intends to show his compassion for a beaten man by only giving Joss a life sentence. First, of course, Joss must be turned into a beaten man, through brutality, torture and hard time. After two years, plenty of time to figure out he was betrayed, Joss breaks out and returns to France. And there he informs his former masters that he's going to complete the assignment while Njala is in France on a state visit. Try and stop me, is his message. A warning: This is one of those movies where the creators think that what is basically a thriller can be turned into "serious contemporary drama" by having a meaningful and ironic ending. That corny and self-important assumption has made so many movies -- American, French and whatever -- seem as dated and unsatisfying as The Parallax View. The movie really starts when Joss gets back to Paris. The high-level bureaucrats are scurrying about, more frightened for their careers if Joss succeeds than they are for Malagasi's president-for-life's life. They know Joss has been trained by the best...he's quick, resourceful, humorous, tough and clever. (After all, he's Jean-Paul Belmondo). So just who is going to stop him, asks the minister at a meeting of senior executives of the Special Action Service? There's a long pause. Men look nervously at each other. Then..."I will," speaks up Commissioner Rosen (Robert Hossein) of the government's Intervention Bureau. Rosen is as tough and smart as Joss, and much more ruthless. Wait a minute. Is this a thriller with some humor or a cartoon with some thrills? It turns out Le Professional is both, with a bit of how-awful-governments-can-be moralizing thrown in. Part of the time the movie is engrossing with a clever plot; part of the time I couldn't help snickering over how over-played some of the characters were. The dialogue moves between the two. Enrico Morricone's obvious score doesn't help. With Le Professional, however, the ride with Belmondo in the driver's seat is almost worth it. Belmondo, 48 when the movie was made, is one of those actors who look their increasing years and benefit from them. Even at his youngest he was no pretty boy, not with that long face, underslung jaw, thick lips and deep lines bracketing his mouth. If he is sometimes called (by Americans) the French Bogart, it would be equally true to call Bogart the American Belmondo.