Le Prix du danger (1983) - film review

A man is hunted to his death across a European city.  Is he a criminal being pursued by the police?  Is he the victim of a gangland killing?  No, he is the latest contestant in Le Prix du Danger, television’s hottest new reality game show!  Each month, the channel CTV broadcasts, live, the competition in which the lucky entrant stands to win a fortune, if he can shake of his five armed assassins and live to the end of the show.   Against the wishes of his girlfriend, François Jacquemart decides to enter the competition, confident that he will win.  He soon discovers that the game is a fake.  The people who offer him assistance during the contest turn out to be employees of CTV who are there to keep him alive for as long as possible, so that the channel can maximise its advertising revenue.   François is determined not only to survive the contest, but also to expose the game for what it is – a despicable fraud...

The term "reality TV" hadn’t even been coined when this film was released in the early 1980s, yet what it shows is a vision of the future that has all but become our present reality.   The power which television executives have to fashion and exploit the tastes of mass audiences for their own ends, the false sincerity of game show hosts who appear oblivious to the avalanche of excreta pouring from their own lips, the complete absence of moral boundaries in programme making...  Welcome to today’s world of mass entertainment.  Admittedly, there isn’t yet a game show which kills off its contestants on air, but that’s probably only because the television lawyers haven’t quite resolved all the legal issues – yet.      

Le Prix du danger is typical of the kind of film that director Yves Boisset made during the 1970s and ’80s, a piece that combines the American-style action thriller with a slightly paranoid take on the important social themes of the day.  An obvious forerunner of Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 film The Running Man (which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger), it depicts the increasingly worrying trend towards voyeuristic television.  Bertrand Tavernier’s film La Mort en direct (1980) covers similar ground, from a somewhat different angle.

Whilst it may lack the coherence and sophistication of many of Yves Boisset’s previous thrillers, Le Prix du danger does achieve an effective and satisfying mix of modern film noir thriller and black comedy.  The action sequences are pacy and well choreographed whilst the acerbic humour gets across the film’s dark political subtext with impact, in spite of its blatant lack of subtlety.  The film benefits from a strong cast, which includes the wonderful Michel Piccoli perfectly cast as the archetypal game show host, dripping insincerity so effortlessly that you wonder why he never became a politician.   Stylistically, Le Prix du danger does feel a little dated, but what it has to say about the world we now live in - on the power of the mass media, the declining moral judgement of broadcasters, etc. – is horribly pertinent.

© James Travers 2008

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