Total Western (2000)

Wonderful character development!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I discovered this little gem in July 2000. I fell literally in love with it. I did not know Samuel Le Bihan. The story is not very surprising but it keeps your attention all along the picture. It's well built, very entertaining, sharp, square. The film seems very quick, short, and you don't feel any boredom. You can watch it in different ways. You can say it's a common action movie, nothing else. But for me, who has seen thousand of movies in my life, especially thrillers and other action movies, and I who knows all clichés, stereotypes, schemes used a billion times, this features contains something very unusual. There is no here any love story, totally useless, between the hero and the gal who "hangs around the corner". The films works with the contrast between savage, wild youngsters, delinquents from the big city, and the natives in the country side where the action takes place. The film makers could not avoid this. We had already seen that in an old french movie: LES LOUPS DANS LA BERGERIE, shot in the early sixties, where young hoodlums were sent in the country by the authorities to re-educate them. Young savages who were confronted with big gangsters. As in this movie: TOTAL WESTERN.It's a pretty violent and brutal piece of work. I must admit. Not for the squeamish.But the thing that was amazed me the most was the character played by Samuel Le Bihan. He is not the super hero, invincible, as we could expect. He is neither the villain who realizes that he could do better for the man kind and finds the redemption. No.He is simply an honest man, fair at the most, there is something of nobility in him, like a knight. A chivalrous knight who knows that his fate will lead him to tragedy. A knight who wants to preserve his dignity. Till his own end. I can tell you that I did not see that everywhere. It's very rare. Very. So beautiful.The ending is worth. Really. A great little movie.

I was recommended this movie from the bald guy who has the DVD-rent shop in my block. It was called Total Action in my country. He said: This is a good french action movie that no one rents or has heard of. Tomorrow I will tell him that he made a good recommendation. It even got better when I understood that it was a western movie.It has a hero that speaks softly and has bad connections in the beginning. But he is honest. He never lies. It has a hot landscape with neighbours to far away. There is the naive priest who do not understand how evil the villains and there sadistic leader is. Everyone in the movie can take a beating with a frying pan or several bullets. SPOILER The arrogant cavalry with no real violence experience arrive but are no match for the dark side./SPOILER It has all the western ingredients but I could not see any horses however. There are no revolvers. Just modern mercenary equipment. So this movie made it clear to me: This is how a modern western movie should be. SPOILER The first part of the movie takes place in the french city where we get to know the lonesome hero and see the problem of the catastrophic heroine deal he is unluckily drawn into. Bédé the hero flees to the sanctuary and works as a volontaire at the reformative school and gets to know the cocky youth and earns there respect. The criminal mercenary effectively trace the hero and starts to torture him. All the pupils who think they are tough bad boys realise that they do play in the same league of evil as the villains. They fight the mercs as a team and overcome there previous small grudge. They all face their fear and overcome them and you feel they become better persons after this traumatic katharsis /SPOILER. This movie does not have a huge budget. Sometimes you get the taste of B-movie in your mouth. That takes the grade down a notch but after we saw Total western we said to each other: "This french modern Western movie was much better then we anticipated"

This movie has been a shock. It begins like an ordinary gangsters movie. But soon, the hero needs to hide in a farm used as an education center for violent youngsters. OK, now the story begins. the hero is threatened by the teenagers and the gangsters. The fight can begin. people shut up while guns speak out loud!The characters are convincing: cynical gangsters; peaceful and coward educators; violent but fresh teenagers. the plot line is simple but yet efficient. Enjoy it!Beware: this movie is not suitable for all audience: several tortures scenes a displayed. The worse of these is not actually on screen as we only see faces showing pain (of the victim), horror (of the unwilling watchers), coldness (of the butcher) and disgust (of the gangsters). Watching this scene made me clench my teeth.

It's a good movie, that's sure. A few months before LE PACTE DES LOUPS or LES RIVIERES POURPRES , Eric Rochant made a great and violent film,with a lot of great gunfight sequences and a Samuel Le Bihan really good in a like-Rambo character. If you like guns, tortures, blood and sometimes free violence, take a look to this TOTAL WESTERN