Monday Movie Reviews #10: Largo Winch

I've been interspersing modern films, often action-thrillers, with my Yasujiro Ozu filmathon. Once in a while, one of them is quite good. More often, they're a lot like The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch. My first clue that this wasn't going to be one of the better films was that it was French. I'm sure the French can make good movies, but I can't think of a good French action film. This one managed to be not only mediocre as an action film, but preachy and left-wing into the bargain.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a billionaire businessman (originally from Albania, but now a cosmopolitan man of the world) getting murdered and his adopted son (the eponymous character) being set up as a fall-guy so the business can be taken over. Despite the fact that the businessman should at least nominally be a good guy, we only get one that's less bad than the rest and an adoptive son who looks for his father's killer so he can be dutiful and then break up the multinational corporation because, well... they're evil things inherently, dontcha know?

Largo turns out to have a head for high finance, hand-to-hand combat as well as anything else that the director thinks he'll look cool doing. Despite this, he does a lot of really dumb things in order to move the plot along and ends up being sold out and threatened by the most unlikely people, because that way you won't see the twist coming! Except you do. And it's telegraphed so early the second half of the film gets tedious while you wait for them to get to the point. You sit there thinking "Yes, yes, get on with it already."

Of course, since it's French and rated R, there is a fair bit of violence though it's not a splatter movie by any means, and there's a healthy dose of profanity and a completely unnecessary sex scene followed by another semi-nude scene. The first is so Mélanie Thierry can take off all her clothes and get physical with the similarly athletic Tomer Sisley. The second nominally serves the plot by relating back to the first (birthmark?), but really seems more like an excuse to put Mlle Thierry's posterior on film again.

I keep trying to think of things that might make it worth your while, but I can't come up with any. I really can't recommend it.