L'Insolent (1973)
Directed by Jean-Claude Roy

Film Review

Although he devoted the greater part of his career to making pornographic films (under the name Patrick Aubin), Jean-Claude Roy also had some success nearer to the mainstream, initially with light comedies such as Une nuit au Moulin Rouge (1957) and Les Combinards (1966), latterly with gritty crime-thrillers, often with a nasty visceral edge.  L'Insolent is one of the latter films, a film that slavishly adheres to a well-established format (heist plus betrayal results in bloody finale) and offers nothing new to a well-worn genre, although that hardly makes it a bad film.  With a solid script and a respectable troupe of actors to play with, Roy turns out a film which, whilst not exactly brimming with originality, holds the attention and compares reasonably well with films by other masters of the policier genre in France at the time, notably Jacques Deray and Georges Lautner.

The American actor Henry Silva was something of a casting coup.  By this time, he already had a reputation for playing cold-blooded killers in gangster films and so he was eminently well-suited to play the central protagonist in Roy's film, a conscienceless hoodlum who kills as easily as he breathes.  Here, Silva is well-matched by André Pousse, an equally charismatic actor but one with a far more ambiguous and complex persona.  The interplay between Silva and Pousse's characters is what most sustains this formulaic thriller - what begins as an uneasy alliance soon escalates into a deadly personal war, and the spectator is never sure who to side with - Silva, the cruel psychopath, or Pousse, the calculating chessplayer.  Had a little more thought and money been spent on it, L'Insolent could have been quite a memorable entry in the thriller genre. In any event, it is considerably easier to digest than Roy's subsequent thriller atrocity Massacres (1991).

Film Synopsis

Emmanuel Ristack, a ruthless American gangster nicknamed 'L'Insolent', succeeds in escaping from the Santé prison.  Without delay, he hooks up with his old partner in crime, Marco, and enlists his help in his next criminal exploit - to hold-up a van laden with gold bullion.  With the help of Milan, the owner of a thriving nightclub, Ristack and Marco manage to get away with the precious cargo.  The problems begin when Milan decides to double-cross his criminal associates...