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Excellent but underrated film

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Henri Verneuil's political thriller is a French take on the assassination of JFK. Yves Montand plays a magistrate investigating the murder of a president. After disagreeing with the findings of an official commission to find out what happened, he starts his personal investigation, reviewing the evidence, interviewing witnesses, discovering holes in the official interpretation and slowly revealing a network of influences that implicates organized crime, secret services and the government.Yves Montand is excellent in his role. It's ironic - and perhaps not a coincidence - that he was chosen for this role. After all he's known as the murdered politician in Costa-Gavras' Z, so this is an inversion of his role. His character Henri Volney embodies all the values we want our civil servants to have: responsibility, courage, initiative, moral convictions.Also fascinating is the subplot about Stanely Milgram's experiments on obedience and authority. In the 196's Milgram conducted experiments to find out how quickly people would surrender their will to others, in order to understand the mentality that allowed Germans to carry out gruesome crimes against innocent people. He discovered that people easily submit to authority figures and will commit atrocities in their name with little incentive.The movie is well written, has excellent cinematography, good twists, gripping suspense, well-defined and likable characters, and a great but severely underused score by Ennio Morricone.

I'm not tired to say this is one of the best political thrillers ever made. The story takes place in a fictional state, but obviously it deals with the murder of Kennedy. A truthful and honest district attorney (played by Yves Montand) does not believe that the murder was planned and executed by the single man Daslow (=Oswald) and though all other officials want to close the case he continuous to investigate with his team.The screenplay is written tight and fast and holds the tension till the end. Just the part dealing with the Milgram experiment about authorities is (though not uninteresting) a bit out of place. The ending sequence - explaining who Icarus really is - partly shot in slow motion and intensified by a Morricone soundtrack is the most powerful sequence I have ever seen in a movie.

In every aspect a true classic. Brilliant script, good camera work plus the outraging performance of the french actors. I see no necessity whatsoever to draw a comparison to "JFK" as it was produced 22 years earlier and forms part of a completely different movie genre. Especially enjoyable is also the music in the picture which was surprisingly written by Ennio Morricone and is as usual a delightful experience.Interesting: Watching the credits at the end, it can be observed that the final shot has the form of an I. "I as In Icarus".

First time I saw this movie was in the eighties, but reviewed now this thriller is still actual. Some newer movies focus on similar topics, but they do not match this french milestone.A president - obviously JF Kennedy - gets shot in an open car during a public appearance. The resulting huge investigation finds the "Lee Harvey Oswald" figure of this movie guilty, but one member of the jury insists in further inquiry. He reveals some surprising evidence ...Unlike Oliver Stone's JFK - a movie with the same plot - this one does not play with emotions, but concentrates in a exciting description of a conspiracy and how everything fits together, drawing a new picture of the assassination. Even a real psychological experiment is used for this explanation of the crime scene. Compared to JFK this movie is more reasonable, intelligent and thrilling. Parts of the plot can be found in a lot of newer movies, I had a kind of deja vu sometimes sitting in the cinema."I... comme Icare" is a "must see". Its unique and brilliant, and the music by Ennio Morricone is wonderful. This movie deserves a very good ranking, if it was a Hollywood production it would be famous for sure.