Director as designer A beautiful, well-made, flamboyant action movie with a swollen Delon, but nothing more. Five masked shooters kill thieves, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and other undesirable elements of Mendeleev’s social table at night. One day, with a group of teenage thieves, the daughter of Pratt, a former police officer living somewhere in equatorial Africa (Delon), is killed. He returns and begins one by one to deal with the shooters, whom he surprisingly quickly identifies, acting without protocol. But the detective intrigue persists, because behind these five is someone, some Sith lord, and to him must lead the roads of revenge. Along the way, Delon talks to an old friend, now the police chief (Jacques Perrin), and also finds himself in the bed of a police inspector, leading the case of five murderers (Fiona Gelin).
But no thriller, no drama. There is no thriller, because the thriller needs an anxious wait, a well-hung suspense, and there is no one to choose from among the characters, and by the end of the first third of the film you understand who is pulling the strings. Therefore, the most beautiful are the first scenes of the film, African and French. There's no drama for two reasons. Incredibly beggarly dialogues - one. A very weak and inconclusive game by Fiona Gelen - two. She has not yet convinced us that she is a self-contained police inspector (and will not convince until the end), as she already throws the blanket in front of Delon, it is implied that she managed to play a suddenly carried away woman no better than a police inspector, despite the implied antagonism of the right law enforcement officer and an outsider.
The motivation of the killers is not clear. Whether they are overzealous crime fighters or neo-fascists like those in Carlos Saura’s Taxi, shot later and better. In any case, the scene of shooting naked young homosexuals is monstrous and little justified by the fact that a well-known swindler in the field of art business was forced into their company.
But worthy of the imagination (close to the end) the appearance of Delon under the guise of a clown in the circus arena. There is something clown about Delon without makeup, and has been there since the beginning of his film career. But Delon in The Policeman's Word is responsible, albeit monotonous. But Perrin cheated. His film career is associated with images of war ("317 platoon, "Tatar Desert" by Dzurlini), but in the war he was a denial of its "justified" cruelty - a young idealist with rather complacent and semi-childish features. Already old, he retained the charm of gentleness and was not very successful, apparently chosen for the role of a disappointed non-idealist. He probably couldn’t help but play that role.
The cinematography and directing of the scenes, I repeat, are good and Jose Pinheiro did “beautiful”. Beautiful, honed and without further claims.
5 out of 10