The Outsider aka Le Marginal [Blu-ray]

excellent

excellent dvd with English dubbing

magic film

Whilst not up to the standards of Jean-Paul Belmondo's sixties and seventies output, Le Marginal does boast a charismatic performance from Belmondo, playing a cop bent on taking down mob leader, Henry Silva.As one would expect of a film made in the 80's, the proceedings, at times, are somewhat cruder and explicit, but Belmondo rises above it all with aplomb.The Netherlands release of this DVD, which I'm reviewing, has an English language option.

a good Jean- paul- Belmondo

It probably takes a film as dull as Belmondo and Jacques Deray's subsequent Le Solitaire to make you really appreciate their much more successful Le Marginal pairing (the third highest grossing film in France in 1983). It's junk and derivative junk at that, but at least it keeps moving and delivers what it promises, while Belmondo is still in good enough shape to do his own stunts - be it climbing into a helicopter from a speeding boat or showing off his driving skills in a car chase (and Remy Julienne's second unit work makes sure you can see that it really is Belmondo doing the driving). If Peur Sur la Ville was inspired by the poster for Bullitt, this is Belmondo's take on Sharky's Machine (albeit without any of that romantic stuff): it's not enough that his cop is busted to the basement no-hopers for getting too close to Mr Big, but the film even goes to the extent of hiring Sharky's nemesis Henry Silva (dubbed in the English version) to play the villain. Silva doesn't really have much to do in the film, but then it's really all Belmondo's show. This is Belmondo at his most populist, kicking ass, taking names and looking cool - well, this being the 80s he's got that ex-professional middleweight boxer look to him (as one hood puts it, "You're not a police officer. You're the best gorilla I know."), but it must work because even hookers fancy him. At times it threatens to become as much an ego trip as a star vehicle, but there's enough action to keep it moving, it has a good sense of the underbelly of the city, from its squats to its gay bars, frequent co-star Pierre Vernier is quietly reliable as Belmondo's sidekick and there's a decent Ennio Morricone score thrown in for good measure. Utterly disposable, but as a brain-off Saturday night movie it passes muster effectively enough.Although the French-language version on StudioCanal's French PAL DVD is not subtitled, there is a dubbed English-language version available, though the extras - trailers and audio commentary from the director - are French only.

Belmondo is a tough cop. He goes after a big-time drug dealer (played by Henry Silva, normally a great villain - see "Sharky's Machine"; but here he is clearly dubbed, and because of that he lacks his usual charisma). He goes to the scuzziest places of Paris and Marseilles, asks for some names, beats up some people, gets the names, goes to more scuzzy places, asks for more names, beats up more people, etc. The whole movie is punch after punch after punch. It seems that the people who made it had no other ambition than to create the French equivalent of "Dirty Harry". Belmondo, who was 50 here, does perform some good stunts at the beginning; apart from those, "Le Marginal" is a violent, episodic, trite, shallow and forgettable cop movie.

I do agree with almost all of what is written in the first review, apart from the last line that is. I would now like to take this opportunity to explain things from the point of view of a Belmondo fan.Jean-Paul Belmondo films are almost never shown in this country, so it is a great treat to see him in anything that is even half decent. This film is good but not perfect. It is a cop movie not an epic and ever since 'Dirty Harry' I feel all movies of this genre are somewhat similar so it is easy to find fault with "the tough cop that does things his own way", formula. There are some great action scenes and as confirmed by the director in the audio commentary that accompanies this film - Belmondo did all his own stunts in this movie - even injuring himself when he was thrown off the windscreen/bonnet of a car (the first action scene in the film). This is not unique to 'Le Marginal' as he has always been something of a daredevil in his films and it is fair to say he was doing this more than twenty years before Jakie Chan became synonymous with this approach to film making. Other things worth pointing out is that the theme music is composed by Ennio Morricone and that the film contains a great car chase; once again he did not rely on a stunt driver to stand in for him during this sequence.This DVD is produced by StudioCanal and is for the French market so English is the bonus language. There are great features like the original trailer and an audio commentary by the director Jacques Deray (Borsalino and Co.,Flic Story). The commentary is in French so it can only be appreciated by those who speak the language. As for the American actor Henry Silva being dubbed - yes, this is true in the English version but as explained by the director, he wanted the audience to see the French words coming from Silva's mouth as it was too difficult to get a perfect synchronicity if he had spoken his mother tongue. So, in the French language version of the film Henry Silva is not dubbed. In all, 'Le Marginal' (The Outsider) is an entertaining distraction.