Trois hommes à abattre (1980) - film review

One evening, Michel Gerfaut, a professional gambler, comes across a badly injured man in a wrecked car.  He takes the man to the nearest hospital and thinks no more about the incident.  Whilst on holiday in Trouville with his girlfriend Béa, he discovers that the man he tried to save died from gunshot wounds, along with two of his colleagues in the weapons industry.  Suspecting a conspiracy, Gerfaut seeks advice from a friend in the security services.  When the latter is shot dead in his apartment, Gerfaut has no doubt that he has become the killers’ next target...

This typical early ‘80s French thriller proved to be a huge success for its producer and lead actor, Alain Delon.  The film was based on a successful novel by the writer Jean-Patrick Manchette, who is credited as being the father of the néo-polar genre.  Delon is – yet again – cast in the kind of role in which he excels, a strong-willed outsider with an unbreakable instinct to survive.  Although by this stage in his career, Delon’s film portrayals tended to be restricted to the image he fashioned for himself in the mid 1970s, he was still capable of turning in some extraordinary physical performances, as Trois hommes à abattre amply testifies.

The film was directed by Jacques Deray who was responsible for some of the most commercially successful policiers of the 1970s and 1980s.  Deray’s crime thrillers compare well with – and often surpass – their American counterparts, in both dramatic content and style.  Trois hommes à abattre is quite possibly Deray’s darkest, most suspenseful – and bloodiest – thriller.  It also has some impressive production values – the actions stunts are well choreographed and the nocturnal photography is genuinely chilling.  Among the film’s most memorable sequences are a stunning car chase, some gruesome killings and a shockingly brutal ending.  Although the film’s content is largely limited to repetitive hunt-and-fight routines, it still manages to be an absorbing and entertaining piece of cinema, particularly for those who like their thrillers hard-boiled.

© James Travers 2003

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