Sans mobile apparent

I saw this for the first time recently aft reading a glowing review by Coventry.

Well, this movie is indeed a solid thriller with a good mystery.

The plot in short - A police detective investigates a series of unexplained killings of unconnected people by a mystery sniper. One of the victim is an ex girlfriend of the detective who tries very hard to find a missing link between all these murders. Though the detective have linked the victims to money laundering, narcotics and prostitution, nothing adds up to a motive for murdering them.

The movie has good locations n a decent musical score but the performances are top notch.

I like the short hair, slim babe, Carla Gravina.

Lemme check out more movies starring her.

I had seen this film in a cinema, years ago, when I was a youngster. Now, I have bought the video in a 2nd hand shop, and...

I has been delighted again with:

a) The plot: good thriller about a snipper who kills several high society persons.

b) The actors: Jean-Louis Trintigant is superb as a policeman,engaged in a difficult case. And he runs top speed...

c) The music: Morricone's score is perfect. It goes along very well and underline top moments.

To summarize: highly commandable film.

In the city of Nice, in the beautiful and sunny French Riviera, a sniper cold-heartedly assassinates four people in less than 48 hours. There isn't an obvious connection between the victims, but since they are all upper-class society members, chief-commissioner Carella senses a lot of pressure to catch the killer fast and to prevent further murders from happening.

It's been such a long since I watched a good old-fashioned, authentic giallo! Okay, so "Without Apparent Motive" is French instead of Italian, and a sniper rifle isn't exactly a traditional giallo murder weapon, but still I feel it qualifies as a bona fide giallo! After all, many delicious trademarks are well-represented, like the convoluted whodunit plot, a mysterious but merciless killer, a struggling police commissioner and many gorgeous women. Dominique Sanda, Carla Gravina and especially Stéphane Audran look lethal and incredibly seductive in their roles.

Although named "Without Apparent Motive", the assassin certainly has a motive for the murders he/she commits, and the gradual and suspenseful revelation of the motive is definitely the strongest quality of the movie. Trintignant plays in his very own typical love-or-hate-him style. I always wonder if he just acts arrogant, or really is arrogant. The locations and scenery are amazing, the great Ennio Morricone wrote another fantastic score, and many sequences are masterfully photographed.

An exceptional movie construction, masterminding the script, the actors, the music and the location. Each scene, per day and murder, and each actor's performance leave vivid pictures in my mind: the plunge in the swimming-pool, the deceived look of Gravina in her love-sex affair with Trintignant, the full power run of Trintignant around the Nice harbor, the final death posture of the murderer. Jean-Louis Trintignant camps a local French Riviera inspector, very self-image oriented as are most of the featured residents of the Cote d'Azur. A series of murders with no evident link is followed by Trintignant, each one filling a piece of the puzzle and bringing him closer to the murderer. Labro, the film director, shoots real-street-life and picks up the best essence of each of his actors. Beyond Trintignant, each other actor seems to have the second role while playing their cast with their own personality. Labro could have been another Jean-Pierre Melville and his magnificent "Le Cercle Rouge". This "Sans Mobile Apparent" showed all the promising ingredients needed by the French cinema to find a respected place in action movies. Labro followed up with "l'Heritier", not bad, far not as good, the magic having disappeared. My biggest regret: "Sans Mobile Apparent" is as yet unavailable in DVD and does not play on TV anymore.

The movie is based on a book by McBain. Never having read the book I can't comment on the fidelity of the adaptation. However, the movie deals with some themes dear to McBain's heart : the difficulty and responsibility of detective work ; the speed at which a problem can turn into a circus, a stampede or a political affair ; the difficulty of policing a modern city where almost all citizens (good or bad) can hide, morph and reinvent themselves. (If you're living in a large city : would you be willing to swear that the kindly gentleman sitting on a park bench and feeding the pigeons is indeed a retired high school teacher, and not an Israeli spy master or a judo instructor kicked out of the Navy Seals for excessive brutality ?) There is also a nicely satirical edge to the work.

The translation to French society works well and the sun-drenched city of Nice is nicely juxtaposed with the relentlessly "noir" atmosphere. The masterful Morricone music evokes a general sense of wrongness and menace.

It should be noted that Trintignant's inspector Carella is not an agreeable man : he alternates between gruff boorishness and solitary misanthropy, while exuding a smoldering, barely contained anger. One senses that any pimply teenager foolish enough to go "oink, oink" in his vicinity would become the owner of a bullet through the brain in two minutes flat. As an approach to community police work this would not be entirely without merit - but still.