Le Professionnel (1981)

On July 6TH, the world of cinema lost one of the greatest composers of the 20TH century when Italian legend Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) passed away at the age of 91. So in order to pay tribute to one of the greats, I decided that I would heck out another film that he scored and thanks to Kanopy, I decided to check out 1981's Le Professionnel (a.k.a. The Professional) which was a French film that was directed by Georges Lautner (Galia). The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (Casino Royale) as special agent Josselin Beaumont who was sent on a mission to Africa to assassinate a president that went absolutely wrong as it landed him two years in jail. Now he has escaped and he has made it back in time to France to teach all of them a lesson including finishing a mission as the president of that country is visiting France. The film also stars Cyrielle Clair (Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) as Alice, Marie-Christine Descouard (The Last Romantic Lover) as Doris Frederiksen, Elisabeth Margoni (Love Actually) as Jeanne Baumont, Jean-Louis Richard (The Bride Wore Black) as Le colonel Martin, Michel Beaune (Body Of My Enemy) as Le capitaine Valeras, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu (The Tenet) as L'inspecteur Farges, Pierre Saintons (Last In, First Out) as President N'Jala, and Robert Hossein (I Killed Rasputin) as Le commissaire Rosen.

This was actually a really good film from beginning to end all because of a couple of factors with one being that Jean-Paul Belmondo had enough swagger to pull off the role and the second reason being that the writing was really good. The film had a really solid story of this guy who was trained so well that he was always a step ahead of everyone, but most importantly he was pissed off because they ditched him. He was caught and the country acted like he wasn't there problem anymore so he wanted to get even with those who hired him. The character he portrays is very interesting because he has the skills of Liam Neeson's Taken character (to a point) with the swagger of James Bond (65% Connery/35% Moore) all rolled into one which is another factor of why I liked him. I definitely liked Ennio's work for this soundtrack as it had a subtle (not over the top) feel to it much like the French so it fit nicely. I liked some of the action in the film as it definitely does the trick, but I have to question the tactics of police officers in France because they do some shady stuff to get the answers they want. The last thing that I liked is that they throw a monkey wrench at you in the end and they end the film in a way that shocked me. It was like sorry no one gets away with anything in our film. You'll have to watch to know what I am talking about, but in the end it was enjoyable to watch. I am going to give the film an A- for a final grade.