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Thursday, March 28, 2024

"GOD IS A BULLET" (**** OUT OF ****)

"Notebook" helmer Nick Cassavetes's R-rated feature "God Is A Bullet" (2023), toplining Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Foxx, and Maika Monroe, qualifies as an unforgettable crime thriller. Now, using the adjective "unforgettable" to describe a film has been so overdone that you may be inclined to shrug it off. Nevertheless, this 'based on a true story' melodrama takes its violence to heretofore untold levels of sadism. Once you lay eyes on this chilling film, you'll know whence I speak. The depiction of violence here is far beyond what most crime movie aficionados are accustomed to when we watch genre movies. "God Is A Bullet" concerns the search for a teenage girl who has been abducted by a warped family of hooligans who live on the fringe of society and have homicidal tendencies.

Our protagonist is a nice guy, pencil-pushing, sheriff's deputy, Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of "Gods of Egypt"), who has ridden a desk for years and earned little respect from his law enforcement colleagues. A regular churchgoer, Bob believes heart and soul in the word of God. Imagine our hero's alarm when nobody answers the doorbell. He is checking in at the home of his ex-wife and her new husband, so he can see his daughter. Entering the house cautiously with his service pistol drawn, Bob finds the two adults butchered like hogs. His ex-wife's African American husband has been slashed, gashed, and hanged spread eagle from the ceiling by his outstretched arms. He finds his ex-wife riddled with lead and floating face down in an outside pool. Worse, his teenage daughter is missing. The despicable dastards who abducted this innocent girl are the devil's own brood in the flesh. They make Rob Zombie's unhinged hellions look like kindergarten kids. Ghoulish tattoos cover every inch of their bodies. One member of this evil bunch, Case (Maika Monroe of "Independence Day: Resurgence") will quit the gang after the diabolical ringleader, Cyrus (Karl Glusman of "Greyhound"), has kicked her front teeth out of her mouth. Case believes Hightower's daughter is still alive, but for how long she has no idea. This spit and polish sheriff's deputy, decked out in his creased uniform, with his neatly trimmed mustache, struggles to deal with his disaster.

Initially, Hightower doesn't trust Case. He refuses to play by her rules to find his daughter. Case ushers the reluctant Hightower into the world of these subhuman thugs who stole his daughter. Poor Bob must undergo a thorough makeover. He has to shun his boy scout uniform and attire himself like gutter trash. Jamie Foxx appears in a cameo as the 'Ferryman.' He is a legendary tattoo artist who lives in the middle of nowhere. Bob's antagonists are blasphemous maniacs. They suffer no guilt from their depredations, have no conscience, and kill without a qualm. Cyrus has upside down crosses tattooed under his eyes and has no respect for life. In one scene, we see him shoot one of his relatives in the head at point blank range without any warning so her brains splatter the wall nearby like strawberry jam. We're talking about the vile scum of the earth. Reluctantly, Mr. Formal, Nice-Guy Deputy must turn into one of these predators to rescue his daughter.

Not only is Bob compelled to remake himself in the image of his enemies, but he must also renounce all of his Christian beliefs. Once Bob and the villains have met each other in a standoff of sorts, the ringleader Cyrus decides to slip him a surprise present. These fiends catch a rattlesnake, pin it down to a table, and inject the reptile with a solution (presumably speed). The rattler's tail shivers twice as fast, and Cyrus stashes it in a bag and sends a disciple to slip it in Bob's unattended truck. Unbeknownst to him, Bob climbs into his truck, spots the bag, and hoists it into his lap to check it. This rattlesnake surges out of the bag like a whip being cracked and strikes our hero several times. He has to shoot the snake to keep it from streaming more venom into his neck. Afterward, Case takes him to the 'Ferryman' and Bob has to undergo a long process of recovery. Such is Bob's tenacity that he bounces back from this debacle. Nevertheless, the end is no closer in sight because the villains are prepared for him. Bob's arranges a swap with Cyrus involving a bag full of money in return for his daughter. The showdown commences in a quarry with fireworks exploding in starbursts while Bob takes down the bad guys without an ounce of remorse.

Clocking in at two hours and thirty-five minutes, "God Is A Bullet" amounts to a clenched jaw, white-knuckled, ordeal that features heavyweight toxic villains who are scary as all get-out. Director Nick Cassavetes also wrote the screenplay based it on pseudonymous American author Boston Teran's novel which was based on a true story. If you're sick of predictable, namby-pamby crime thrillers, "God Is A Bullet" will hit you like a Mac truck and leave you stunned by its revelations.

"GUN WOMAN" (2014) *** OUT OF ****

Premises don't come either more outlandish or extreme than "Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf" writer & director Kurando Mitsutake's far-fetched, gruesome, but riveting revenge thriller "Gun Woman" with Japanese actress Asami as the eponymous heroine. For the record, Asami is the same actress who appeared in all five installments of the "Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead" series. Although it isn't a ten-star masterpiece, there is more going on in this absurd but satisfying epic about an insane doctor who exacts vengeance on the deranged killer who murdered of his wife in cold blood.

The Mastermind (Kairi Narita of "Into the Sun") is a brilliant surgeon with an uncanny ability to erase knife wounds. After the exiled son of Hamazaki (Noriaki Kamata of "Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf") rapes and kills the Mastermind's wife, snapping her neck in a fit of glee, he kicks the poor doctor nearly to death, breaks one of the guy's legs, and then-the ultimate indignity-urinates on him! Nevertheless, he lets the poor slob live! This psycho villain surrounds himself day and night by a goon squad of bodyguards, and he indulges in the most heinous kind of pleasure know to mankind-necrophilia. The revenge driven Mastermind learns Hamazaki's son visits a remote place known as "the room" where he can screw the dead. The site is maintained by some weirdos who thoroughly check out the corpses as well as the customers before they allow them on the premises. This is the only place where Hamazaki's son can venture into without being under the vigilant eyes of his army of bodyguards. This off-the-grid place provides guards of their own. As it turns out, the Mastermind bribes one of the employees who verifies the dead are really defunct. Next, the Mastermind buys a drug addict, Mayumi (Asami of "The Machine Girl"), from human traffickers and rehabilitates her so she is no longer a meth addict. Redemption saves the day?

Afterward, she learns how to dismantle an automatic pistol, reassemble it, and then empty a magazine of 13 cartridges into a target in under 20 seconds! As he explains to Mayumi, she will masquerade as a corpse in the room. Since the naked bodies are inspected before they are brought into the site, the Mastermind gives her an injection of a drug that will make her appear lifeless. Meantime, he surgically implants the two main parts of a 9mm automatic pistol in her breast and abdomen with the clip stuffed presumably in her vagina. Basically, she smuggles her gun inside her body since she has no other way to take it into the facility. Before our heroine embarks on this outrageous mission, she watches as the Mastermind murders another girl as a demonstration to show Mayumi that once she has extracted the firearm from her body, she has 25 minutes to carry out the execution of Hamazaki's lunatic son. After the 25 minutes elapses, she may die from loss of blood. Naturally, nothing in life is a picnic. Our death-defying heroine makes it into the facility and recovers from the effects of the drug which enables her to play possum, she tangles with a brawny guard. Although the guards and employees have weapons, these weapons have been modified so that only they can discharge them. Our heroine must kill three of these guards before she can get a crack at the heinously demented son. Mitsutake frames the story with another story about an assassin-a bespectacled, mustached American (Matthew Floyd Miller of "Stan the Man") who shoots a woman twice in the head while she is taking a shower-and then is driven to an extraction point in Las Vegas by a contract wheel man (Dean Simone of "Dumb Money") who discuss the bizarre death of Hamazaki's son while they cruise from Los Angeles to Sin City.

Predictably, "Gun Woman" wallows in nudity, blood, gore, and violence. Nevertheless, writer & director Kurando Mitsutake has designed it strictly as a soft-core porno potboiler. The pay-off from the book-ends of the framing story set up is terrific. Now, the acting is nothing that the Oscars would recognize, but "Gun Woman" will hold your attention throughout its 85 minutes, and Mitsutake never deviates from the main plot or squanders a second of screen time. Not for the squeamish, this imaginative but graphic shoot'em up gives new meaning to carrying concealed weapons.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

"5-CARD STUD" (1968) **1/2 OUT OF ****

 "Garden of Evil" director Henry Hathaway's western whodunit "5-Card Stud" (**1/2 out of ****) pits a "hellfire gambler" Dean Martin against a "gunfire preacher" Robert Mitchum in a frontier tale about lynching, murder, and revenge. Mind you, deducing the whodunit will pose a minor challenge to astute audiences. You will spot the actor committing the crimes long before the film identifies him in its penultimate scene. If you study the stable strangling scene, the killer's headgear gives him away. The characters in "True Grit" scenarist Marquerite Roberts' screenplay based on Ray Gaulden's novel are flat since they neither change either their their mentality or their morality. Nevertheless, Roberts boots around an interesting question about "who people were before they became who they are" which segues with the mystery. Otherwise, this Hathaway horse opera is sturdy enough, contains a believable cast and knows how to blend comedy with drama nimbly enough so that it rarely becomes either heavy-handed or repetitious.

Compared to Hathaway's other oaters, "5-Card Stud" doesn't top "True Grit," "The Sons of Katie Elder," "Garden of Evil," "From Hell to Texas," or "Rawhide." However, "5-Card Stud" surpasses "Shoot Out" and "Nevada Smith." Although some critics don't cotton to Maurice Jarre's orchestral score and denigrated it as "Dr. Zhivago" on the range, I contend it is superb music and differs from anything that Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, or Ennio Morricone would have done. Jarre's score enlivens the action and enhances the atmosphere. The Dean Martin song at the beginning and end of "5-Card Stud" marks this sagebrusher as a traditional western As far back in the 1950s, many major westerns contained a ballad about the story or the hero with lyrics like ". . . play your poke and he'd leave you broke."

Interestingly, "5-Card Stud" makes some racial references that chipped away at the usual barriers. In one scene, Robert Mitchum's gun slinging preacher doesn't think it inappropriate that a black man be buried among whites, something that marked this western as a departure from Jim Crow mentality. John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" had broken ground earlier with a gunfight so that an Indian could be buried in a white graveyard.

Professional gambler Van Morgan (Dean Martin of "Sergeants 3") takes a break from a Saturday night poker game while Sig Ever's son Nick (Roddy McDowell of "Planet of the Apes"), stableman Joe Hurley (Bill Fletcher of "Hour of the Gun"), Mace Jones (Roy Jenson of "Big Jake"), storekeeper Fred Carson (Boyd 'Red' Morgan of "Violent Saturday"), Ever's ranch hand Stoney Burough (George Robotham of "The Split") continue to play poker with newcomer Frankie Rudd (Jerry Gatlin of "The Train Robbers") until Nick catches Rudd cheating 'red-handed' and organizes a lynch party. They take Rudd out to a stream and string him up from the bridge. Barkeeper George (Yaphet Koto of "Live and Let Die") warns Morgan and Morgan lights out after Nick and company to thwart the necktie party. "You don't hang a cheat," Morgan growls, "you kick him out of town." When Morgan arrives, Frankie is swinging with a noose around his neck, and Nick clubs Morgan on the back of the head with his six-gun.

Mama Malone (Ruth Springford of "Vengeance Is Mine") discovers Morgan strewn on the boardwalk the following morning and summons George to help the battered gambler to his room. Morgan decides to pull out of Rincon and try his luck in Denver. Before he leaves, he rides out to Sig Ever's spread to bid goodbye to Sig's comely daughter Nora (Katherine Justice of "The Way West") and deck Nick as repayment for clobbering him at the hanging.

Naturally, the town marshal (John Anderson of "Young Billy Young") can neither identify the lynch mob nor the hanged man. Later, participants in the card game begin to die off one by one. One is wrapped up in barbed wire, another is hanged in the church, and still another is suffocated in a barrel of flour. This was pretty radical stuff for 1968. Indeed, Hathaway and Roberts make each death look different. Eventually, George visits Morgan in Denver, and Morgan decides to ride back to Rincon. Two things have changed since Morgan rode out of Rincon. First, the town has acquired a gun-t0ting pastor who renovates the church and holds Sunday services. Second, Lilly Langford (Inger Stephens of "Hang'em High") has opened a barbershop that features a $20 item that intrigues Morgan when he visits her establishment for the first time. Lilly and Nora contend for Morgan, while Morgan closes in on the new preacher Jonathan Rudd.

"5-Card Stud" boasts several good scenes. The shoot-out in the streets of Rincon when paranoid miners go berserk because they fear that they may be the next victim of the local serial killer is well staged. If you slow down your DVD or VHS copy, you can see Dean Martin lose his Stetson when he grabs hold of an axle to let a wagon haul him out of harm's way. You can see his headgear fall off completely and in the next scene is hat is back on his head. Nevertheless, it is still a neat gunfight with Morgan and Rudd standing back to back against the opposition. The scene at a windmill where Rudd hits each of the windmill blades because he was aiming at the spaces in between the blades is fun, too. George plays a role in the story and provides his buddy Morgan with a clue to the killer's identity. The animosity between Nick Evers and Van Morgan is feisty throughout the action with Nora trying to do her best to dampen it. Van Morgan and Lilly have some amusing banter. The expository scenes about Nick's childhood almost make his character marginally sympathetic.

Indeed, "5-Card Stud" is no classic, but it good enough for a rainy day.

Saturday, March 23, 2024

"DAMSEL" (2024) **1/2

 

“Stranger Things” heroine Milly Bobby Brown emerges as a pretty pugnacious warrior princess in “28 Weeks Later” director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s above-average medieval fantasy “Damsel.” Although she spends almost every minute in distress, she never requires the services of a man to deliver her from adversity. Our beautiful heroine finds herself in a position that foreshadows wealth, affluence, and love until the dark truth reveals itself. Indeed, she is poised to die an ignominious death in a sizzling wreath of flames from jaws of a vengeful dragon! Initially, “Damsel” unfolds like a predictable fairy tale. She is a beautiful young thing poised to become the wife of a handsome young prince. She hopes he will be kind. Not surprisingly, “Wrath of the Titans” scenarist Dan Mazeau appropriates all the time cliches of the genre but stands them on their collective heads. Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone of “Beowulf”) has negotiated a marriage of convenience for his adorable, Elodie (Milly Bobby Brown), to a sovereign. Prince Henry (Nick Robinson of “Silk Road”) will wed her in his distant kingdom under the icy eyes of his mother Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright of “Forrest Gump”) who is Janus-faced. Basically, the twin ravages of starvation and ecological ruin have virtually destroyed Bayford’s kingdom. His decision to give his daughter’s hand to a stranger prince so his subjects will flourish is not in Elodie’s best interests. No sooner has our heroine exchanged vows than the Prince ushers her up a winding path into a mountain cave.

After a brief ceremony concludes, Prince Henry gathers an unsuspecting Elodie gracefully in his arms and then without warning throws her off a bridge into a shadowy abyss. What poor Elodie doesn’t realize is a humongous dragon with a ravenous appetite awaits her when she lands with a thud. This ferocious flying reptile is herself a scorned mother, and Queen Isabelle has served her human sacrifices as part of a debt because her army slew the dragon’s three offspring in the nest. The King and his army skewered the demons with their swords, and the dragon swept in and roasted in a blaze of fury. Afterward, this talkative dragon toys with Elodie. Thus ends the first half of this tolerable 110-minute fantasy. One of the features that solidifies “Damsel” as a fantasy is its loquacious dragon. Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo of “Star Trek Beyond” provides the voice and gives the CGI dragon a faintly menacing personality. Elodie and the Dragon start out as antagonists but once their minds meet they become sisters.  

The first half of the action chronicles the hopes and dreams of our fair heroine as Lord Bayford and Elodie’s stepmom, Bayford’s Queen Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett of “Black Panther”) inform her of her impending nuptials. They set sail in a wooden ship for a distant kingdom. Elodie dreads her future. Nevertheless, dutiful daughter that she is, she accommodates her Lord despite her apparent misgivings. Imagine her surprise when she finds herself flung into a gloomy cavern to face a smoldering female dragon with the power of speech. Elodie survives a variety trials and tribulations in her efforts to elude death. While she wanders desperately through an inhospitable maze of caves, she encounters some exotic creatures. After her first brush with the dragon, Elodie discovers that some glow worms, slightly similar to maggots, are useful in restoring charred flesh. Eventually, her father and several men enter the cave to save her but they struggle to survive themselves. The incensed reptile dragon sets them ablaze and crushes Lord Bayford under its claw before it resumes her hunt for Elodie.

However, Elodie improvises and turns the tables on her enemy. Although she out-smarts the evil dragon, Elodie takes pity on it. She understands how the bereaved creature has been mistreated and told lies. In a reversal of fortune, Elodie saves the dragon’s life, using those glow worm maggots to restore the dragon’s health. Indeed, the fiendish flying flamethrower had cornered Elodie, but our heroine survived by her wits. Cleverly, she stood with her back to a huge curved rock structure. Nimbly, she sidestepped the burst of the dragon’s sulfurous breath so the flames blew back onto the beast, singing it into submission! Meanwhile, since Elodie has managed to survive thus far, the evil Queen abducts Elodie’s younger sister, Floria (newcomer Brooke Carter ), as a substitute. The act of treachery cements Isabelle’s villainy.

Meantime, once Elodie befriends the dragon. She explains the circumstances of her predicament and wins the sympathy of the hideous creature. Together, they team up and take on the evil Queen. Perhaps the Queen’s impending comeuppance is a little too obvious, but it is entirely satisfying. The computer-generated scenery of a fanciful kingdom looks spectacular enough, even though it is obviously synthetic. The detail in the depths of the cave during Elodie’s journey of hardship looks good. The CGI of the dragon stands up to scrutiny for the purposes of this revisionist fantasy. Sadly, despite its twists and turns, nothing about the shallow characters makes them remotely memorable. Indeed, characterization is kept to a minimum. Despite the horrendous obstacle course over which our heroine triumph, we know in the end she will win out. As a Young Adult fantasy, “Damsel” qualifies as worth watching once.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

"FORTURES OF WAR" (2024) **

 After a surprise raid on a German convoy goes sideways and their imperious C.O., Lieutenant Quayle (Mark Kitto of "The War Below") is killed, the survivors of an ill-fated British commando unit find themselves cut off in Nazi-occupied France. Sergeant Mason (James Oliver Wheatley of "One Ranger") and a mixed batch of Tommies, both black as well as white, along with a couple of pugnacious female French Resistance fighters take refuge in an apparently deserted farm. Alas, they learn the farm is not completely deserted. Now, between the blotched mission and the forced march that culminates at the deserted farm house, co-writer & director Bill Thomas indulges in moments reminiscent of Louis Milestone's classic World War II movie "A Walk in the Sun" as the Tommies reflect on their predicament. One of the blacks doesn't trust the French girls, while one of the whites, a smart aleck named Leech (Daniel Thrace of “Book of Monsters”), causes no end of trouble. His precipitant action when he whipped back the rear flap of the flatbed revealed a nasty Kraut holding a flame-thrower. Although Leech eludes death, the Tommy who had accompanied him is incinerated. Now, this incendiary death is probably the most violent scene. Meantime, “Fortunes of War" never tries to rival the grit, grime, and gore of "Saving Private Ryan.” Nevertheless, everything about this infantry epic looks entirely plausible. Thomas generates considerable urgency from the get-go with our heroes exchanging gunfire with the enemy. Meaning, less talk and more action! Sadly, the filmmakers reveal next to nothing about that raid gone wrong. Lieutenant Quayle claimed his plan would succeed like clockwork.

Afterward, Mason, his men, and the French dames must fight the Nazis in a baptism of bullets. Essentially, this modest military melodrama could be classified as a single setting actioneer. Eventually, Thomas and co-scribe Ian Thomas came up with a title that foreshadows the chief surprise in this men on a mission movie. As war weary Sergeant Mason, James Oliver Wheatley radiates a gruff virile charm as he chews the scenery. This slap happy combat non-com keeps reminding his men he isn't their "mum." The French Resistance girls know which end of their weapons to aim at the enemy. Annette (Sophie Craig of "The Adventures of Maid Marian") cradles a machine gun like a baby, while her fellow French compatriot, Ines (newcomer Meg Forgan), lugs around a sniper's rifle. Ines rarely misses what she fires at in a fracas. These dames have no qualms about loosening a hail of lead into a passel of Jerries. Would that the filmmakers had developed their characters in greater depth so they would be more memorable. No sooner have our heroes taken up residence at the farm than they encounter some suspicious characters. Turns out one of them is a Belgium guy who has a screwy story to tell them about bricks. Eventually, our outnumbered and outgunned chaps find themselves surrounded by more Germans than they can shower with a hand grenades. It comes as something of a shock when German General Horseler (Bob Cryer of "The Undertaker"), immaculate in his trench coat and cap, wants to negotiate with them. He worries more about what our heroes may reveal when they surrender as well as what his men will think when they discover his underlying motives. Turns out Horseler had been melting down precious Jewish contraband, that is, golden ornaments and glittering jewelry into ingots! The sooner Horseler can get these infernal Brits out of the way, the less attention he will face about his ulterior motives. Mind you, the Brits chop up a fair number of the enemy before this happens. Shrewdly, Horseler uses this moment of silence to wave the white flag of peace. To all outward concerns, Horseler justifies it as time for his troops to  remove the wounded and the dead.

 

Thomas relies heavily on the charisma of his capable cast, since their budget couldn’t accommodate the kind of fireworks display we're accustomed to in million-dollar military melodramas. This stiff upper lip saga about the aftermath of a blown mission clocks in at a meager 85 minutes. Happily, Thomas makes certain the air is swarming with bullets, and our heroes are whittled down one by one until only a handful are alive. Some of the German soldiers look like they are wearing American helmets, but everybody appears to tote period-accurate firearms. Sergeant Mason brandishes a .30 calibered Thompson submachine gun, while the most of the German soldiers carry the familiar MP 40 "Schmeissers." Beware of the DVD cover art for “Fortunes of War,” because a flaming B-17 flies above our heroes. No aircraft are ever seen in this movie. Apart from highlighting the little-known fact blacks served in the British Army during World War II, "Fortunes of War" is a fair to middling potboiler. If racially integrated World War II epics are your cup of tea, you should watch “Come Out Fighting” (2022) about African American tankers in Patton’s army!

Saturday, February 17, 2024

"THE OUTSIDE MAN" **1/2 OUT OF ****

 

“Borsalino” director Jacques Deray’s  French mobster melodrama “The Outside Man,” starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ann-Margret, and Roy Scheider, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Frenchman flown to Los Angeles to kill a wealthy crime czar, Victor Kovacs (Ted de Corsia of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”), in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant of “The Great Silence”) isn’t a professional contract killer. Instead, wrestling with a gambling addiction, he must find a way to pay off his enormous debts. Unfortunately, the only way he can raise sufficient funds to liquidate those debts is to fly from Paris to Los Angeles and ice a notorious crime lord. After landing in Los Angeles, Lucien checks into the luxurious Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The desk clerk hands him a mysterious attaché case along with his room key. In his room, Lucien finds a loaded snub-nosed revolver and an envelope stuffed with cash in the case. Renting a car, Lucien drives out to the Kovacs mansion. The doorman admits him without frisking him for firearms. Victor surprises Lucien then realizes he isn’t the man he was expecting. Lucien brandishes his revolver and shoots him dead on the spot with a single shot. Earlier, Lucien had emptied the cylinder of the gun in his hotel room and replaced only one of the six bullets. No sooner has Lucien fled the scene of the homicide than an alert circulates about Kovacs’s murder. However, the description of the shooter, furnished by Victor's wife Jackie (Angie Dickinson of “Ocean’s Eleven”) and Victor’s son Alex (Umberto Orsini of “La Dolce Vita”) doesn’t fit Lucien!

While the LAPD struggles to catch the killer, Lucien discovers the Detroit mob has sent an assassin to rub him out. Lenny (Roy Scheider of “Jaws”) arrives in town eager to kill Lucien. Fate has a quirky way of intervening on behalf of our protagonist, and Lucien survives three of Lenny’s desperate attempts on his life. Meantime, the Frenchman hooks up with a bosomy topless bartender, Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret of “Viva Las Vegas”), who agrees to help him obtain a passport. The dastards who had hired Lucien have stolen both his passport and his plane ticket, so our protagonist cannot leave the country. Lucien confers with his Parisian friend Antoine (Michel Constantin of “Violent City”) about his predicament during a long-distance phone call. He advises Lucien to find with one of his old girlfriends, Nancy. Happily, she arranges for Lucien to buy a forged passport from a cabbie, Karl (Carlo De Mejo of “Teorema”), who can get him one.

Eventually, a naïve Lucien figures out the killing was an inside job, and he served as a mere pawn. Victor’s greedy wife Jackie and his treacherous son Alex were instrumental in orchestrating Victor’s demise. Poised as our protagonist is to leave the country, Lucien has second thoughts and prefers to remain in L.A., so he can discover who incriminated him. Meantime, Antoine and his bodyguard fly in from Paris to attend Victor’s funeral. Probably the most offbeat thing about “The Outside Man” is the funeral itself. When everybody pays their last respects to Victor, they find his corpse sitting upright in a chair with a cigar in one hand. What a bizarre way to display an embalmed corpse! An impromptu gunfight erupts in the funeral home when one of Alex’s henchmen, Miller (Alex Rocco of “The Godfather”), tries to gun down Antoine. Instead, Antoine guns down Miller and traps a cowardly Alex hiding in a casket, finishing Alex off for good. Meantime, Lucien hijacks a hearse and careens away through the cemetery grounds with Antoine chasing after him. A policeman with a rifle shoots Antoine before he can get into the hearse with Lucien. Antoine tells Lucien to leave without him. Grabbing hole of the rear bumper, a mortally wounded Antoine is dragged behind the hearse until he dies. During the gunfight, Lucien caught a slug himself, too. As “The Outside Man” concludes, Lucien is sitting behind the steering wheel of the hearse with blood-soaked hands. Like Deray's later crime thriller "Three Men to Kill" (1980), the protagonist dies in the end just as Lucien dies here in "The Outside Man."

This uneven but entertaining crime thriller has its moments. Initially, when Lucien goes on the lam, he carjacks a single-mom, Mrs. Barnes (Georgia Engel of “Grown Ups 2”), and forces her at gunpoint to take him to her residence. Lucien cools his heels there. Mrs. Barnes cooks him supper and her presumptuous young son, Eric (Jackie Earle Haley of “Watchmen”), wants to know more about him. During a private phone call, Lucien catches the disruptive adolescent listening in on his call and slaps the stuffing out of him. Meanwhile, every step of the way, Lenny shadows Lucien but fails repeatedly to kill him. At one point, Lucien picks up a hitchhiker who rhapsodizes about Jesus. Cruising up alongside them, Lenny shoots from his car into Lucien’s. Miraculously, he misses Lucien and blasts the Jesus freak. During the rest of the film, Lenny pursues Lucien. He kills the cabbie that provided Lucien with a passport and finally tracks him down to a hotel where he is holed up with Nancy. Their adversarial relationship changes when Lenny decides to team up with Lucien and go to the Kovacs estate. At the last second before they enter the estate, Lenny tries to double-cross the Frenchman, but Lucien kills him with a single shot.

Deray and writers Jean-Claude Carrière and Ian McLellan Hunter complicate matters considerably throughout this brisk, 105-minute thriller. Actually, the filmmakers had not scheduled to shoot “The Outside Man” but another movie. Unfortunately, the other movie they were set to produce fell apart. Deray’s scenarists whipped up this tale in a matter of twelve days, and he lensed it before their work permits expired. Composer Michel Legrand garnishes this fish-out-of-water tale with an interesting orchestral soundtrack that accentuates the action. The abrupt ending with our protagonist parked in the Los Angles river basin with blood on his hands and nowhere to run leaves too many plot threads hanging. Basically, this was ‘an inside job’ organized by Alex to liquidate his dad Victor using an “Outside Man” from Paris who knew no better.