Docteur Justice

After portraying Diabolik ,a villain from a comic strip in the sixties,John Philip Law has a change of heart:here he is cast as Docteur Justice,another hero from a French comic strip,but on the right side of the law,no pun intended .This comic strip was very average,and is virtually forgotten today.So is the movie.

This is veteran Christian-Jaque's penultimate movie,but the director was artistically dead for years,to be precise after his underrated "le repas des fauves" (1963).All his subsequent works are often sub -Janes Bond ,the likes of "Le Saint prend l'affût" (1966,long before Val Kilmer)or "deux billets pour Mexico" (1968),or dismal Brigitte Bardot's vehicle "les pétroleuses" (1971)or a remake of "that lady Hamilton" (1968).

"Docteur Justice" is actually given some kind of a poor man's James Bond treatment:Gert "Goldfinger" Froebe ,-whose acting verges on tongue-in-cheek -,putting to sleep the whole crew of a tanker to grab the black gold is some kind of "attack of Fort Knox" in miniature.The plot is banal,the pictures nice and the whole thing harmless.