Three Men to Kill
Directed by Jacques Deray (1980) ***
One of the nine films director Jacques Deray shot with actor Alain Delon, the French language Three Men to Kill takes a cynical Jean-Patrick Manchette novel and retains its jaded edge for the big screen. It takes a standard Hitchcockian plot, that of the wronged man sought by both authorities and the underworld, and gives it new twists.
Alain Delon plays Michel Gerfaut, an under-the-radar player who makes a good living gambling and has a fashion model girlfriend, Béa (Dalila Di Lazzaro). Traveling alone at night on a country road, he comes across a car run off to the side, its distinguished looking driver nearly dead. He takes the driver to a hospital, then leaves to get to a card game on time. What he doesn’t know is what Deray shows us beforehand: The driver was one of several dignitaries present at a filmed demonstration of malfunctioning guided missiles, shown at a luxurious mansion owned by a fastidious and ruthless high ranking official, Emmerich (Pierre Dux). When the driver dies in the hospital from two bullet wounds, Gerfaut is the number one suspect. Soon two other attendees of that mansion meeting are murdered and the contract killers are under order to take Gerfaut out, too (Emmerich and his attendant, Leprince — Michel Auclair — are convinced Gerfaut is a professional, working for a rival missile manufacturer).
Three Men to Kill takes its leisurely time — not at all a bad thing — and features some thrilling set pieces, of a level that might have given Hitchcock, who died the year this film was released, a measure of appreciation or even jealousy. One particular scene of wry Hitchcockian irony involves Gerfaut being attacked and nearly drowned in broad daylight at a busy, family-filled beach. The surrounding summer carousers just assume the attempted murder is horse play — an excellent presentation of one of Hitch’s favorite ideas, bodily menace in plain sight (see his Family Plot, where a bishop is kidnapped in front of a large, unsuspecting church congregation). A car chase through the busy streets of Paris recalls The French Connection for thrills and culminates in a gas station confrontation which may owe a bit to Hitchcock’s The Birds.
The idea, though, that Three Men to Kill is a hodgepodge of Hitchcock homages can be dispelled. Alain Delon’s Michel Gerfaut is nothing like the typical Hitchcockian man in trouble. Gerfaut fights back, violently. Such is his hard-fought success in eluding death (and the police authorities) that Emmerich is convinced he’s dealing with a formidable opponent, not a high-living gambler. The film is also noteworthy in the time it invests in secondary characters and people on the periphery, from Gerfaut’s restaurant-owning mother (Simone Renant, in her last film), to Béa, who refuses to play the submissive, naive girlfriend, and even Leprince’s henchman, Herve (Yvan Tanguy). All are portrayed as having shown or implied lives of their own outside the perimeters of the story being told.
Jean-Patrick Manchette, one of the more important French crime writers of the period, later turned to writing crime thriller screenplays for films I’m now eager to hunt down. Alain Delon, whose combination of mellowness and determination is just right for Three Men to Kill, used the success of the film to propel him into what basically became a second career for him in the ’80s, as a crime/action actor. Delon’s long and prolific career is an interesting one, due for further study. His many attempts over decades to make it big in Hollywood led nowhere, but he ended up working with some of the greatest film directors anyway, including Antonioni, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard and Visconti. He also had a career on stage and a music recording career.
Three Men to Kill has been newly restored by Cohen Media Group and will be released August 2022 on Blu-ray and DVD coupled with the 1977 Alain Delon film The Gang, also directed by Jacques Deray.
—Michael R. Neno, 2022 May 15