Cristi_Ciopron Review of The Judge and the Assassin

The Judge and the Assassin (1976)

In the right hands, it could have been Noiret's film ...

[6/10 · 7 July 2008]

The leads are both very good—Noiret being perhaps the best of the two …--yet without having much stuff to play. The two central characters are poorly written, with not much intrinsic interest. I expected—I must confess—a thrilling hunt game—a wild hunt, in an ever accelerating pace; a savage confrontation of energies—or, at least, a game of subtlety, intelligence, wit and cunning. Yet, the film is but a police procedural, too well performed by Noiret and Galabru; the truth is that this crap director did not deserve such actors. The characters remain unexplained, unexplored and indifferent to the viewer, despite the prodigious art of Galabru and Noiret. While Noiret elegantly, impassibly exercised his mastery, Galabru looked very willing to invest, to create, to find his character's life ….The director is inept, the script is crap. THE JUDGE AND THE ASSASSIN has nor the excitement of a larger—than—life manhunt ,neither that of an abundant deploy of intelligence, shrewdness, intuition, psychology. The whole movie is wrong—wrong from the concept. It amounts to no more than a police procedural, without excitement, atmosphere or suspense. It also ends on a dignified crap note of social vindication. The viewer has the feeling, the perception that everything in this movie was irrelevant, insipid. No excitement, of whatever kind; no life, that is,in it,and no valid creation. Only a pretentious leftist police procedural. The actors are first—hand, Noiret reopens the drawer with ambiguous, eerie characters (his character here is not without reminding the one in LA GRANDE BOUFFE);yet the movie does not find its tone—that is, the director does not find the film's tone.