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Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good concept, poorly executed.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Sometimes, the "magic" of cinema seems to take hold of us.The two main characters are superb. So is cinematography. Everything is "in the dark, humid, without hope". Lanky Lola (1.78 m), while providing the inevitable love interest, is quite gelid and stolid, so her beauty (rain scene!, she awakening chez Lambert!) is not overtly "too much".Bensoussan is a stupid kid, while Lambert... what a script! This should be required viewing for budding plot writers. He speaks seldomly, bluntly, seemingly without passion, world wearily, like a philosopher who decided to toss the world aside, as "a useless hypothesis". Gradually we get to know his intentions, which are not clear from the beginning (he's a master at deception :)!), but make sense afterwards. Unlike many Hollywood commercial thrillers, that try to be witty and only end up being preposterous. Or "revenge" films alla Stallone and Bronson, without any emotion because there's nothing to "balance" the killing spree.This is a "cartesian" movie. "Clear and disc tint" ideas. If issued by a "gas station clerk", well, that's the master's disguise!The Paris we witness is not the postcard's or Bardot's: everything is seedy, "the system" is rotten, like the copper Bauer's synthesis near the end: "There'll always be another one".The ending is fine! Seldomly had I thought: "this should end right here", and it did.IMDb reviewers agree on Bruno Nuytten (DP)'s work. Luckily enough, I hadn't read those reviews, and while watching even the first minutes I said: "what a good 'atmosphere'". That's a good work: noticeable even without "knowing it's something important".Berri doing this shows a hidden potential. Pity he didn't do more of the genre! Maybe he "needed" all this "sun drenched Southern France" to make one "night" film...I agree with IMDb reviewers like gregory-joulin about its two-part structure, and with Bob Taylor that probably the first part is the best. But I admit it: I felt more with the second. "Plot holes"? Many. But who won't remember the "murder by the small filling station" or the way he swiftly avoids Bauer's questioning. Unassuming, without hesitating, thus lethally. Just like what follows suit...I liked his "method of interrogation": breaking the mobster's motorbike (not the man). And the way he answers to Bauer on why he was't working: (seeming concerned) "With all that happened, I had to take a few days off". (About this film) Lambert would just quip: "Watch it".

Classic dark French psych thriller featuring Coluche, better known for his stand up comedy dressed in blue and white striped dungarees - Andy Pandy style. His acting as the sad middle aged loser Lambert should have earned him an Oscar.Having lived in the area where the film is set, (and worked in an auto repair shop)the atmosphere and the photography are spot on. Very sad, complex and entertaining.If you like this, watch Subway and Diva. The title derives from the area where the film is set - Pantin, a working class quarter in North Paris, and should be with first letter in caps.

Claude Berri is one of the great artists of family life in French cinema. I have enjoyed so many of his films about youth, courtship, marriage and fatherhood: Mazel Tov, Le cinéma de Papa, La première fois, Un moment d'égarement. The first half of Tchao Pantin works well in this framework, but the second half is just a routine revenge story.I didn't really respond to the alcohol-blunted efforts of Coluche to rally himself to avenge the killing of Richard Anconina, nor did Agnès Soral's emotional about-face--deciding to help Coluche find the killer--seem believable. This actress has a very inexpressive face, and body to match. A tribute to Bruno Nuytten's wonderful cinematography is in order: there really is nobody like him for rainy night scenes. I'll give 10-10 for Coluche and Anconina, and zero for the rest.

Little known outside France but beloved in it Coluche, like Bourvil (of whom the same may be said) excelled at comedy but was more than competent at drama as he demonstrates here. Those who know Claude Berri mostly and/or if only for his international successes Jean de Florette and Manon des Source will perhaps be surprised at the radical change of milieu, from the sunny, well-lit and wide-open spaces of southern France to the dark, murky narrow enclosed world of demi-monde Paris small-time drug-dealers. Coluche is Lambert-no-last-name who is measuring out his life in the litres of gas he pumps as night man at a small filling station; one night a young man of mixed blood, some of it Arab, wanders in to avoid the police - he has an endearing habit of stealing mopeds and motorbikes - and an unlikely bond is slowly forged between the two, easier to understand later with the disclosure that Lambert is an ex-cop whose teenage son died of an overdose. The kid (Richard Anconia) falls foul of his own dealer and gets it where the chicken got the axe and Lambert is moved to avenge him and is himself killed for his pains. Slow to gain momentum it slowly tightens its grip on the viewer and is well worth a look.