Reviews & Ratings for
Dead Weight More at IMDbPro »Le boulet (original title)

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11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Very funny french action movie, 9 January 2007

Author: chrichtonsworld from Netherlands

"Le Boulet" has been brought out on DVD in the Netherlands with the title "Rally"! This title is a reference to the race (Paris-Dakar)being held in Afrika! IMDb didn't recognize this title,so I guess they made this title up for the dutch market! From the cover I expected something like "Taxi" but wasn't sure. But I got more!This movie surprised me totally! It is shown that the actors in the movie really had fun making this movie! So much is happening in this movie and never gets boring! I laughed a lot while watching this movie and enjoyed the action! The main character is a real idiot and drives his reluctant partner in crime totally mad! I don't understand why many reviewers didn't like this movie! Because this one is really funny and even delivers on some great stunts and action! Pure fun!

15 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
Je l'aime bien! Cheerful kookiness, 6 June 2002

Author: llanoite from part time Paris

I didn't expect to but I liked the film very much. Granted, buddy films have been done one million times, but rather than try to put a new twist on an old theme, this one simply had fun with it. A cheerfully kooky film, with some really well-executed stunts (loved the "It's TURK, not KURD" shootout and the chase scene--nice to see a Peugeot stand in for an Aston Martin for a change), a wild set of plot twists, snappy dialogue, exotic locations. I genuinely enjoyed the Malian prison warden--very funny especially during the (brief) watch scene. I honestly laughed a lot. It's just a well-done, clever, fresh little buddy flick. Sit back and enjoy it.

10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
What a film!, 16 September 2003

Author: samwise1usa from Phoenix, AZ

I just got this movie from Amazon.fr and am I glad I did! What a hoot. It is a great buddy-buddy movie, with over-the-top comedy gags, as well as some of the best cgi effects in any film. The Farris Wheel sequence is something to behold. My wife and I encourage you to get this one. Very funny, wonderful action.

8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Quite a good one., 13 January 2003

Author: gevike from Hungary

I think this film is perfect if you just want to relax and enjoy some action spiced up with some humor. The car chase is unforgettable. The film is quite similar to the Guy Ritchie film (Lock, stock) with its many crazy characters but not so sophisticated, still quite good.

8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Fun action adventure comedy, 7 May 2002

Author: Rene Schmidig from Geneva, Switzerland

This movie is better than one thought. Does anybody remember the great 70ies movies with Louis De Funès ? This one is in the same spirit with goofy comic-like characters and a taste of adventure. It is set in France and in Africa. Everybody is funnily over acting and the movie has one of the dumbest (and funniest) endings in recent movie history. Give it a try !

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
It didn't get lost in the translation..., 4 June 2002
Author: kurtman-2 from Toronto

I recently saw this movie on an airplane. I watched it on a tiny 4inch screen (100mm) and had to read subtitles all the way through. It was a hilarious film. If the creators were trying to make a serious blockbuster film, they missed the mark. But I looked to me like they were out to make a fun film that just got crazy at times. This they did. Even reading subtitles, I laughed out loud several times (not a good idea on a crowded plane, btw). Now it is possible that it was because I was in a confined environment with little or no outside stimulii for 8 hours that I found this piece highly entertaining, but I still have to rate this a 7 or 8 outta 10 for entertainment value. Look for it. (Probably not on a North American screen though...)

5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Great movie. Lanvin is wonderful, 23 December 2002

Author: (bouzouita)

What a great movie. Lanvin's performance is terrific as is the motley of characters. The action rivals any american blockbuster, the jokes are hilarious as are the situations and unexpected happenings that continuously keep the protagonists from their goal!!

4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Not sure, 14 September 2003

Author: jean-no from Paris

I really didn't know what to expect from this one. Actually I expected a movie like "la chèvre", "les compères" or "l'emmerdeur" : two guys unfortunately sticked one to the other for some reason... Allowing great and funny actors show. But there ?... The actors are good (but Poelvoerde is not at his best here for me), the stunts and special effects are not far from the best action films. The story is not bad. The directing is fair. But something doesn't work at all. I'm not sure of what. Too much violence ? some too-stupid-to-be-true behaviors ? Maybe. So I didn't enjoyed it completely and I won't give it more than a 5 on 10.

7 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
It's not Benoît Poelvoorde who is the millstone but the movie itself!, 28 October 2003

Author: dbdumonteil

Launched in the Spring 2002 in France, "le boulet" was hugely successful (more than 3 million of spectators in the French theaters). Why? This success remains both mysterious and unexplainable because Alain Berbérian's movie's got every conceivable fault, every fault imaginable so that you can name it: the perfect load of rubbish. It consists on an uninspired and hackneyed script with threadbare topics. Dialogs that aren't very worked and a poor directing that emphasizes too much on special effects.

But above all, "le boulet" is a bad movie because it borrows mostly elements or sequences from a lot of French movies. Thus, you find traces of "la cité de la peur" (1994) made by the same director, always Berbérian. But you also think about "la soif de l'or" (1993) and "la grande vadrouille" (1966) both made by Gérard Oury. Even the duo of characters with opposed disposition (here, we deal with the frail Poelvoorde and the heartless Lanvin) and who are however compelled to work together isn't original. Indeed, this comic device had been already used (and brilliantly) by Francis Veber. You only have to watch "la chèvre" (1981) or "les fugitifs" (1986) to realize it.

With this poor movie that looks hollow, we deal with a very serious situation: it would appear that French comedy is declining...

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Wildly inconsistent but not a dead loss, 26 August 2007

Author: TrevorAclea from London, England

17 years after Patrice Leconte's Les Specialistes, glossy comedy-thriller Le Boulet finds Gerard Lanvin shackled and on the run again, this time with Benoît Poelvoorde's prison warder only days before his release in pursuit of a winning lottery ticket that sad sack Poelvoorde's girlfriend has taken with her to a cross-country rally in Africa after walking out on him. Naturally, just getting the ticket would be too easy, so they're also pursued by Djimon Hounsou's relentless cop with an uncanny knack of getting ahead of them at every turn and vengeful psychotic killer José Garcia. Unfortunately the results are somewhat hit-and-miss, not least due to the wildly shifting tone – like many French comedies this seems to take a delight in introducing likable supporting characters who meet violent ends that aren't particularly amusing, something domestic audiences seem to lap up but which doesn't travel terribly well. It doesn't help that the film's first big setpiece, a delirious and spectacular chase involving a runaway Ferris wheel in the streets of Paris, is much more fun than anything that follows, but overall it's more entertaining than not even if it doesn't live up to its potential.

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