7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, and Francis Blanche star in this quirky French comedy. To keep a promise to a dying friend, ex-criminal Fernand (Ventura) must return to the life he left behind as he takes over his friend’s empire.
Starring: Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier, Francis Blanche, Claude Rich, Pierre BertinForeign | 100% |
Crime | 20% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lino Ventura was an Italian born actor who became a major French movie star. Rather bulky and not especially photogenic (he has an odd resemblance to American comedian Danny Thomas), Ventura was one of those “accidental” actors who kind of stumbled into films through no fault of his own (so to speak) and found a rather lucrative career just sitting there waiting for him. Due to his hardboiled appearance and hefty physique, Ventura often found himself playing gangsters, and in a number of films he was co-starred with Jean Gabin, one of the most iconic French actors of all time and a man who became a personal friend to Ventura. Someone at Olive Films might be a Ventura fan of sorts, for the label has brought out a number of Ventura offerings on Blu-ray over the past several months, titles like Greed in the Sun, Taxi for Tobruk and most recently The Great Spy Chase. (There’s also an excellent Criterion release of another Ventura film, Army of Shadows, available on Blu-ray.) All of these films help to show Ventura’s considerable range, with Monsieur Gangster probably falling closer to The Great Spy Chase in general terms even if it doesn't share the same kind of buffoonish qualities or cartoon like ambience. This similarity might be due to the fact that Monsieur Gangster, which predated The Great Spy Chase by one year, features quite a few of the same cast and crew, notably director Georges Lautner and co-writer Michel Audiard. (Audiard also provided dialogue for Greed in the Sun, A Taxi for Tobruk and The Great Spy Chase, proving a versatility similar to Ventura’s.) While there are the same farcical elements in Monsieur Gangster as there are in The Great Spy Chase, this earlier film is much more of a “fish out of water” offering which posits Ventura as a onetime hood who has gone straight (more or less), only to find himself sucked back into a life of crime due (much like Ventura’s film career) to no fault of his own.
Monsieur Gangster is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. While the elements here are in generally good safe, there are several outright strange anomalies scattered throughout this presentation which boil down to what almost looks like tinting, believe it or not. For just a second here or a second there, the registration changes markedly, sometimes with a bluish tint (look at the last screenshot, which is admittedly awash in optical artifacts since it's part of the credits sequence, but which is markedly darker than just the frame before this one), at other times with an almost sepia tone. If you don't mind this admittedly minor and transitory anomalies, the rest of this high definition presentation looks quite good. Contrast, aside from the issues noted above, is consistent and quite strong, and fine detail is at very pleasing levels, especially in the close-ups.
Monsieur Gangster features a nice sounding lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track in the original French. The film is pretty dialogue heavy and this mono track ably supports the repartee between the characters. There are also a glut of sound effects as the various gangsters keep trying to assassinate Fernand, and some of these are quite whimsical (guns with silencers sound oddly rather like the default "beep" that iPhones use to announce an incoming email). The track offers typically boxy sounding fidelity which is most noticeable in the music cues.
Monsieur Gangster isn't as manic as The Great Spy Chase, but it features somewhat the same tone, with silly violence brushing up against domestic dysfunction. The film is probably going to be best appreciated by those with at least a smattering of French, as those people can more readily appreciated the whiplash quality of a lot of Michel Audiard's dialogue. There are a number of standout sequences, though, even for those who don't speak a lick of French, and there's a good reason this film's reputation has only grown since its unheralded original release. This Blu-ray has some occasional though ultimately minor issues with video quality, but the audio is about what you'd expect for a film of this vintage. Recommended.
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