Total western (2000) Online

I discovered this little gem in July 2000. I fell literally in love with it. I did not know Samuel Le Bihan. The story is not very surprising but it keeps your attention all along the picture. It's well built, very entertaining, sharp, square. The film seems very quick, short, and you don't feel any boredom. You can watch it in different ways. You can say it's a common action movie, nothing else. But for me, who has seen thousand of movies in my life, especially thrillers and other action movies, and I who knows all clichés, stereotypes, schemes used a billion times, this features contains something very unusual. There is no here any love story, totally useless, between the hero and the gal who "hangs around the corner". The films works with the contrast between savage, wild youngsters, delinquents from the big city, and the natives in the country side where the action takes place. The film makers could not avoid this.

We had already seen that in an old french movie: LES LOUPS DANS LA BERGERIE, shot in the early sixties, where young hoodlums were sent in the country by the authorities to re-educate them. Young savages who were confronted with big gangsters. As in this movie: TOTAL WESTERN.

It's a pretty violent and brutal piece of work. I must admit. Not for the squeamish.

But the thing that was amazed me the most was the character played by Samuel Le Bihan. He is not the super hero, invincible, as we could expect. He is neither the villain who realizes that he could do better for the man kind and finds the redemption.

No.

He is simply an honest man, fair at the most, there is something of nobility in him, like a knight. A chivalrous knight who knows that his fate will lead him to tragedy. A knight who wants to preserve his dignity. Till his own end. I can tell you that I did not see that everywhere. It's very rare. Very. So beautiful.

The ending is worth. Really.

A great little movie.

It's a good movie, that's sure. A few months before LE PACTE DES LOUPS or LES RIVIERES POURPRES , Eric Rochant made a great and violent film,with a lot of great gunfight sequences and a Samuel Le Bihan really good in a like-Rambo character. If you like guns, tortures, blood and sometimes free violence, take a look to this TOTAL WESTERN

This movie has been a shock. It begins like an ordinary gangsters movie. But soon, the hero needs to hide in a farm used as an education center for violent youngsters. OK, now the story begins. the hero is threatened by the teenagers and the gangsters. The fight can begin. people shut up while guns speak out loud!

The characters are convincing: cynical gangsters; peaceful and coward educators; violent but fresh teenagers.

the plot line is simple but yet efficient. Enjoy it!

Beware: this movie is not suitable for all audience: several tortures scenes a displayed. The worse of these is not actually on screen as we only see faces showing pain (of the victim), horror (of the unwilling watchers), coldness (of the butcher) and disgust (of the gangsters). Watching this scene made me clench my teeth.

I saw this movie at the premiere at the Grand Rex Monday night. Not knowing anything about the movie, except that I'd liked Rochant's "Aux yeux du monde", I was impressed. I found it was an intelligent film, with a good soundtrack, comparable with a good old American action movie, (suspense, simple but effective script) but keeping a popular French touch. It has all the elements of a fun shoot'em up movie, with pointed humor and a certain wistful detachment with regard to the (sometimes hard to take) violence. It can be enjoyed by fans of Pulp Fiction, Taxi (stupid but effective French movie) or the Seven Samurai or Ghost Dog.

This is a return to the rural thriller (hence the title :"total western" ;French Aveyron becomes the wild wild west ) which was trendy in the seventies and early eighties with works such as " La Horse" "La Veuve Couderc" or "Canicule" ;only violence -and I mean violence :Samuel Le Bihan's torture scene is almost unbearable -makes the difference .The gangsters are seventies-like (a straight-faced Jean Pierre Kalfon )and the teacher of teenagers with special needs (played by Jean-François Stevenin,who was the schoolteacher in Truffaut's "L'Argent De Poche "(small change), looks like a person who took part in the events of May 1968 .

Filmed on location in the splendid Aveyron landscapes where the home for delinquents is located ,the story is hackneyed ,but thanks to the cast ,the movie is not devoid of qualities:the youngsters are well directed and Le Bihan is credible (except for the last scenes when he becomes Rambo to the power of 10).It seems that the director does not know how to end his movie and the last scenes drag on (maybe he was waiting for the sunset!).Thus the best scenes are to be found in the first half ,with the arrival of the new "conselor" in the place ,and the problems dealing with the adults and the young people he encounters.

I was recommended this movie from the bald guy who has the DVD-rent shop in my block. It was called Total Action in my country. He said: This is a good french action movie that no one rents or has heard of. Tomorrow I will tell him that he made a good recommendation. It even got better when I understood that it was a western movie.

It has a hero that speaks softly and has bad connections in the beginning. But he is honest. He never lies. It has a hot landscape with neighbours to far away. There is the naive priest who do not understand how evil the villains and there sadistic leader is. Everyone in the movie can take a beating with a frying pan or several bullets. SPOILER The arrogant cavalry with no real violence experience arrive but are no match for the dark side./SPOILER It has all the western ingredients but I could not see any horses however. There are no revolvers. Just modern mercenary equipment. So this movie made it clear to me: This is how a modern western movie should be. SPOILER The first part of the movie takes place in the french city where we get to know the lonesome hero and see the problem of the catastrophic heroine deal he is unluckily drawn into. Bédé the hero flees to the sanctuary and works as a volontaire at the reformative school and gets to know the cocky youth and earns there respect. The criminal mercenary effectively trace the hero and starts to torture him. All the pupils who think they are tough bad boys realise that they do play in the same league of evil as the villains. They fight the mercs as a team and overcome there previous small grudge. They all face their fear and overcome them and you feel they become better persons after this traumatic katharsis /SPOILER.

This movie does not have a huge budget. Sometimes you get the taste of B-movie in your mouth. That takes the grade down a notch but after we saw Total western we said to each other: "This french modern Western movie was much better then we anticipated"