The Executioner

Intended as a political movie (shades of Costa-Gavras' "Z"),"permission to kill" is a mess ,not only the "political " background remains very vague ,not to say simplistic but the plot is so confusing it's sometimes difficult to understand the characters' motives;a cosmopolitan cast does not help: Americans (Forrest),English (Bogarde who surprises Timothy Dalton in bed with another man ,and not an "honest "man to be precise ,French (Nicole Calfan ,not really convincing as the "hitwoman",who appears twice in the nude and a brat who has nothing to say)plus Albanian Bekim Fehmiu who died a few months ago.The ending is the perfect cliché of the political assassination.

It was the second time Bogarde had teamed up with Ava Gardner after " the angel wore red" (1961),and once again they made the bad choice.Ava Gardner,although aging,was still fascinating and the reason why I did not give up watching before the end.