MIMSY FARMER, JEAN GABIN & ALAIN DELON 'TWO MEN IN TOWN'

Mimsy Farmer and Michel Bouquet in TWO MEN IN TOWN Year: 1973 Rating: ***1/2

French New Wave director José Giovanni's TWO MEN IN TOWN is obviously inspired by Victor Hugo's LES MISÉRABLES, but for a 1970's crime fan it will be most reminiscent of STRAIGHT TIME starring Dustin Hoffman...

Based on a 1973 novel (same year as this feature) by then-convict/future-actor Edward Bunker, particularly the second-act plot-line involving a dastardly police inspector, who had originally arrested bank robber Alain Delon for the ten years that social worker Jean Gabin gets him out early from in the film's semi-optimistic prelude...

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Career-criminal Hoffman had battled M. Emmett Walsh's stubborn parole officer, who was dead-set on getting him back in prison... even throwing him behind bars for a couple of humiliating days... which is exactly what happens here...

That's despite having a good job and a new girlfriend in American turned European starlet Mimsy Farmer, ironically working at a bank and part of the reason that Delone winds up being...

 Gérard Depardieu and Victor Lanoux in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Well that shouldn't be spoiled... yet the anti capital-punishment aspect not only takes up the entire third act, it derails two potentially thrilling story-lines: one involving Delone's former partners-in-crime (including potential young firebrand Gérard Depardieu), who keep showing up unannounced, and tenacious detective Michel Bouquet, putting the heat on Delon: for meeting with those crooks...

Overall, despite the great camera angles and fine leading and side performances (including extremely beautiful Ilaria Occhini as Delone's short-lived wife and his feisty red-headed lawyer Malka Ribowska), TWO MEN starts feeling like a collection of cautionary tale vignettes... and all of the intriguing crime-genre aspects become a deliberate means to a tragically predicable end...

Alain Delon and Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Especially once the agenda becomes clear, with Jean Gabin's narration more sermonizing than expository — his character feeling more like the director's political mouthpiece than an actual person... 

Like Stanley Kubrick's far superior yet equally dismal anti-war classic PATHS OF GLORY, also about France's severe death penalty, if there's no hope for the main characters, there's no real hope for an audience.

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Malka Ribowska in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Gérard Depardieu and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer and Michel Bouquet in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon

Mimsy Farmer in Two Men in Town with Alain Delon, Cécile Vassort, Christine Fabréga and Jean Gabin

Mimsy Farmer in TWO MEN IN TOWN with Alain Delon, Cécile Vassort and Jean Gabin

Cécile Vassort in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in TWO MEN IN TOWN

Alain Delon and Ilaria Occhini in TWO MEN IN TOWN