Entertaining enough gangster saga

Author: TrevorAclea from London, England
14 August 2010

Like its antihero's life of crime, A Man Called La Rocca doesn't ultimately amount to much, but it's an entertaining enough crime story that gets by on atmosphere and star power. Just as well, because the storytelling, particularly in the first third, isn't as clear as it could be - the film feels like it's missing a reel after the title sequence - and the film drifts from incident to incident at times like Belmondo's smalltime gangster. The ostensible plot sees him called to Marseilles to help out a friend (Pierre Vaneck) who has been framed by his business partner only to end up taking over the club, but it's given no urgency and remains strictly on the backburner for much of the movie.

There are good scenes along the way, be it clearing out a gambling club when some difficult hoods don't want to leave or clearing out a minefield to get a reduction in his prison sentence. A few neat character details too: one of his sidekicks is a dandy who doesn't want to do anything that'll crease his expensive new suits while another looks like a shop foreman.

One of French cinema's many adaptations of a Jose Giovanni novel, directed by Jean Becker (whose father Jacques had previously filmed Giovanni's Le Trou) with the author serving as co-writer, it has his customary atmosphere allied to the kind of slightly minimalist black and white style of French polars of the early 60s that carries it over the rough patches without ever threatening to become a classic.

Giovanni would go on to remake it in 1972 as La Scoumoune with Belmondo reprising his role and Michel Constantin, who convincingly plays a vicious deserter running a protection business here, playing the Vaneck role to considerably less effect all round.