Le Solitaire (1987) - film review

A jaundiced police commissioner, Stan Jalard, is planning to start a new life, running a hotel in the Antilles with best friend.  When his friend is shot dead almost under his nose, Stan abandons his dream and resumes his police duties, with the sole objective of tracking down his friend’s killer, the ruthless crook Schneider.

Despite some rather awkward attempts to bring it up to date (the all-pervasive disco culture, the viscerally realistic killings, etc.), Le Solitaire is a crime thriller in the classic French polar mould.  The simple tale of revenge and retribution which provides the film’s plot is familiar but competently realised by Jacques Deray, with some typically tough and charismatic performances (Belmondo and Malo are excellent) – combining all the elements you would expect to find in the traditional polar.  The original title of the film, Cobra, was changed when Deray discovered that Sylvester Stallone was making an extremely physical action thriller with the same title.

Prompted partly by his a major injury Belmondo sustained whilst making an earlier film, Deray decided to minimise the use of action stunts in this film, opting instead for something which is nearer to the psychological thriller.  This is in complete contrast to Deray’s previous Belmondo film, Le Marginal (1983), which saw the actor accomplishing some of his most impressive stunts.   Despite this, the two films have a number of similarities, not least in the casting, and Deray promoted Le Solitaire as a sequel to Le Marginal, even though there is nothing in the film’s narrative to link the two films.

Although Le Solitaire is marginally the better of the two films, it was far less successful than its predecessor.  Whereas Le Marginal attracted a million cinema-goers in Paris alone, Le Solitaire failed to match this figure in the whole of France.  This reflected a growing trend in French cinema in the late 1980s: the traditional crime thriller was becoming increasingly unpopular in France, with many attempts to re-invent the formula failing spectacularly at the box office.  Another possible reason for the film’s unpopularity was Jean-Paul Belmondo’s decision to return to his theatre work, bringing to an end his era as the strong action hero  of French cinema.

© James Travers 2001

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?