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Dog Day More at IMDbPro »Canicule (original title)
| Index | 10 reviews in total |
7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Bonkers but oddly moving, 8 May 2005
Author:
marekj66 from United Kingdom
Canicule or Dog day is completely bonkers. It is a cartoon really, but
a pretty violent and ludicrous one. Lee Marvin in one of his final
roles is not given enough screen time, only at the climax of the film
is he terrific, really giving his all as the dying gangster (he was
probably ill himself then). In the rest of the film he looks on in
disbelief and looks like he would rather be elsewhere. There is a lot
of 'business' going on inside the farm which is not worth going into
and much of the film would be seen a French Farce or as being like
'Carry on' or 'Benny Hill'- if it was not so violent or just plain
nasty in its depiction and abuse of its characters.
The film is violent towards women and negative about humans and
sexuality in general. The film collapses into the absurd as the body
count mounts up as the crazy inhabitants of the farm, police and nearby
innocents are all brutally wiped out and the best remaining parts are
between the small boy in his surreal 'boat' shaped den and the great
Marvin. Ne actor has looked this dislocated from a film since Terence
Stamp in 'Theorem'. Lee Marvin was a great actor, but this film is not
worthy of him and is only worth a look if you want to see Marvin in
this piece of weird French surrealism.
3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Jimmy Cobb and the Jacques, 7 May 2007
Author:
bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York
Canicule has the distinct aroma of tax write off and trip to France for
Lee Marvin in one of his last and least films of his career.
Marvin plays American bank robber Jimmy Cobb who is on the run and now
in France. The French authorities want this guy bad, they're even armed
to the teeth. The beginning is a homage to Sam Peckinpaugh and The Wild
Bunch with a shootout on the Paris streets where a whole lot of people
get themselves killed in a botched attempt to take Marvin.
Lee's on the loose with the loot from a bank job that was obviously
committed in America because it's in dollars as opposed to francs. But
he manages to get to the Normandy countryside where he falls into the
hands of a family of farmers who've got their own ideas about him and
his loot and his reputation. And by no means is it unanimous.
Canicule is a French attempt to make an American style gangster film
and they're not bad at it when doing things like Lemmy Caution with
American expatriate Eddie Constantine. This one could have used the
real Sam Peckinpaugh however directing this mostly French cast of
players with Lee Marvin and Tina Louise. The dubbing and editing is
hardly first rate. Marvin is in bad health which the camera plainly
shows.
As another reviewer stated Gorky Park is a far better film. That and
Death Hunt are the last two really great films Lee Marvin made.
8 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Depressing, 11 February 2003
Author:
MadCow5703
This film was just downright depressing for me as a sleaze-movie lover and a fan of the great Lee Marvin. It had all the right elements, but the director, Yves Boisset, really screwed this film up. I blame him for everything that is wrong with it. His direction is so sloppy and third-rate I couldn't even tell what the hell was going on half the time. It could have been an interesting, if somewhat disturbing, black comedy. As other reviewers have stated, there are similarities between this film and Marvin's Prime Cut, but that film found a good balance between the repulsive and the humorous. This one fails on almost every level. It isn't even worthy enough to go into detail of its flaws. Also, Lee Marvin is totally wasted in this film. Once the first 5 minutes are over he is given absolutely nothing to do. Boisset had this incredible actor in the twilight of his career to work with. He could have made it into a sort of Last Great Film for the man, a study of a bad guy at the end of his life played by an actor famous for playing bad guys near the end of his life. Instead, that honor goes to Gorky Park. But I guess none of that really matters as Marvin was very sick during the making of this film, and you can tell. He seems tired, bored, and physically he looks haggard and ill. You can practically see his skull through his skin. This is NOT the way you will want to remember this great actor, so please, if you like Lee Marvin, do yourself a favor and honor his memory by never ever watching this movie. You have been warned.
Strange project for Lee Marvin, 4 February 2012
Author:
Wizard-8 from Victoria, BC
Although I haven't seen every one of his movies, I am reasonably confident to call "Dog Day" the strangest movie Lee Marvin ever appeared in. Why he decided to appear in it, I have no idea, especially since he was still a big star back home in the United States. Fans of Marvin will likely be disappointed by the fact that Marvin doesn't appear in this movie as frequently as he does in his other movies - in fact, he almost becomes a secondary character. The other characters in the movie are a real weird lot, disappearing and reappearing seemingly at random, and acting in random ways when they do appear. Certainly, the movie at first does command your attention because you've likely not seen anything like it before, but it soon becomes tiresome, and you likely won't care what happens at the end when it eventually gets there.
A Dog's Tail, 27 November 2008
Author:
sol from Brooklyn NY USA
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
***SPOILERS*** After a blotched robbery with half a dozen people,
including an eight year old boy, getting killed American gangster Jimmy
Cobb, Lee Marvin, is on the run, with the French Police hot on his
tail, in the French countryside with the couple of million dollars he
heisted.
Burying the money in a nearby wheat field Jimmy doesn't realize that
he's been spotted by 13 year-old Chim,David Bennent, who's got big
plans for himself in becoming the towns next Godfather. Drgging up the
money when Jimmy was still on the run Chim replaces it with a bag full
of rocks and uses most of it to party around town, like drinking booze
smoking cigars and carousing around with hookers, thus throwing
suspicion on himself. Back at Chim's family's farm where Jimmys hiding
out the man of the house, I'm not quite sure what relationship he has
to Chim, the piggish and coarse Horace-Victor Lanoux-is busy abusing,
whom I assume is Chim's older sister, his wife Jessica,Miou-Miou. It's
in this strange and dangerous environment that the fugitive Jimmy Cobb
finds himself in.
It doesn't take that long for Horace's family that includes his always
drunk brother Socrate, Jean Carmet, and nymphomaniac sister Segolene,
Bernadette Lafont, to discover Jimmy and hold him hostage until the
police arrive with them getting a fat reward for his capture. It's
later when the greedy Horace decides to get Jimmy to tell him where he
hid the millions of dollars he stole, and keep it all for himself, that
things begin to get a bit crazy at the Horace Farm. Crazy enough to
have Jimmy want not only to be capture but even end up dead in order to
avoid being stuck with the Horace crew! Which to Jimmy would be a fate
far worse then death itself!
A number of side plots in the movie have to do with Horace and his wife
Jessica trying to use Jimmy as a scapegoat in crimes that they
themselves plan and end up committing. This in both Horace & Jessica
knowing that that the fugitive from the law Jimmy, not them, will end
up being blamed for them. There's also the tragic domestic, or house
maid, Gusta-Marguerite Muni-who's always being threaten by Horace to be
sent to a nursing home. This in Horace knowing perfectly well that
she's terrified of being sent there and would end up killing herself if
she was.
The movie soon get completely out of hand with Jimmy, the man on the
spot, getting romantically involved with Jessica who's using him as a
pasty or fall guy in the planned murder of her abusive husband Horace.
This all leads to Jimmy ending up murdering, as well as being framed
for murdering, at least another half dozen, not including those killed
in the bank holdup, persons by the time the movie is finally over!
***SPOILER ALERT*** With the money gone and him having no hope for
escaping the police dragnet Jimmy's only hope now is to get himself
killed and finally be put out of is misery. Even that wish on Jimmys
part is in jeopardy with the Al Capone or John Gottie wannabe Chim, now
calling himself Aniro De La Crouchie, wanting to capture Jimmy alive
and become famous for doing it!
As it turned jimmy did deny, by personally blowing his own brains out,
Chim from taking him alive but it was fun loving Doudo Doudo, Joseph
Mono, the grease monkey and all around handyman at the Horace Fram who
ended up with all the stolen cash. The perpetually lucky Doudo Doudo
came across the stolen money, after Chim dug it up and reburied it, and
thus ended up not only leaving the crazy Horace place but moving into a
swanky penthouse in Paris and ended up living happily ever after.
1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Lee Marvin in a trashy French thriller., 5 January 2007
Author:
fedor8 (fedor8@yahoo.com) from Serbia
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Incredibly trashy French thriller about on-the-run outlaw Marvin who seeks refuge on a French farm only to find demented peasants there. The film features a collection of perverts, lunatics, degenerates, and oddball situations which are often original and sometimes amusing. Everyone in this film wants to kill something, including even the grandma (who kills herself), and the boy (wants to kill Marvin). Could have been a better film if only some of the acting (some of the cops, the older brother, and the pimps/gangsters) were better, and if the dialog were less boring and cleverer. The music is bad, especially at the beginning, where it sounds like a porno movie soundtrack. The plot and the premise are good, but the script, with its crap dialog and comic-book characters, is a mediocrity. Some of the acting was not bad (Marvin, the boy, Miou-Miou, and the nymphomaniac). What the hell kind of a name is Miou-Miou?
5 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Thresher Chase a Repeat of "Prime Cut", 3 January 2000
Author:
Alice Copeland Brown (alicecbrown@yahoo.com) from Boston
Watch the two movies together for an example of a good film and a bad one
with the same themes. No one is good in this one, and that goes for the
acting as well as the morality. The family is depraved and watching Lee
Marvin go through his 'take the illegal money, eye the women, escape the
pursuers' bit is incredibly boring.
Skip it. A real waste of film, despite the VanGogh beauty of the golden
fields of southern France.
3 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Interesting, but doesn't deliver, 13 April 2002
Author:
Sorsimus from Kaarina, Finland
This is essentially a trash film that luckily does not take itself too
seriously. It is well aware of its nature as entertainment and uses themes
familiar from such films as "Deliverance" and "The Hills Have Eyes" in a
sort of parodic context.
It features a family living in rural France where the father is a brutal
and
violent pervert, his brother is same but worse, the son (about 10) is
following on the same track and the father's sister is a nympho. Key in
lots
of tasteless moments (the clubbering to death of two Swedish (topless)
campers, the suicide of the grandmother when they threaten to take her to
old folks' home, the spending spree of the 10 year old kid in a cathouse
and
so on)and what you have is a fairly entertaining exploitation picture with
a
European touch.
You know whether you'll like it or not! Definitely not for the fans of Lee
Marvin...
3 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Idiotic, 13 March 2009
Author:
alansmithee04 (alansmithee@gmx.com) from St. Cloud, Minnesota
"Canicule" leaves so many questions unanswered. Was the relationship
between Lee Marvin's character and the retarded farm boy supposed to be
touching, comical or teeth-grindingly stupid? Was the reason Tina
Louise disappeared entirely from the film because the editor was a
drunken ham-fisted film school reject? What is Tina Louise's character
even doing in this film? Did the director just fly around in a
helicopter shouting "Wheeeeee!" the entire shoot while the rest of the
crew sat around snorting coke and going 'Zut Alors! Zis New Wave film
making - it is fantastique!' or something? So many questions...
Okay, long story short. Lee Marvin, dressed as a 1930's gangster, robs
an armored car and shoots a bunch of cops and a pre-schooler, then lams
it to the French countryside where he's captured by a repulsive bunch
of inbred French rednecks. Sound interesting? It isn't. The cops
overfly the farm about a ga-zillion times looking for Lee, each shot
lovingly filmed from another helicopter (the one where the director was
yelling "Wheeeeee!") (or "Le Wheeeeee!" since he's French) but can't
find him because he's always in the barn setting fires or strangling
nymphomaniacs or whatever.
But here's the depressing part. Ready? Despite being a film built
solely around the image of Lee Marvin standing around in a wheat field,
"Canicule" would be considered a cinematic masterpiece today if it were
made by Quentin Tarantino and starred Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie.
It wants to be parody but rarely rises to the level of stick-figure
cartoon, in other words the perfect film for a society of porn obsessed
violence addicts like the US.
"Wheeeee!"
5 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
What a mess, 9 April 1999
Author:
anonymous from Paris, France
Horrible, completely ridiculous with a not so slight touch of vulgarity. Lee Marvin is completely lost in this awful and irrealistic world. No interest.
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