Nice colorful remake of the black-and-white 1966 version in the tradition of the Nouveau Vague policiers! The film fully reflects the French tradition of showing honorable, almost hero-like gangsters. No emphasis on big explosions but emphasis on the characters. And of course, if you want to meet a gangster in France, a French director will not let you down and take you to Marseille.

About the story: A older 'respected' gangster is freed from prison and returns to his love, only to find that her business (sigaret smuggling under the cover of a night club) has just been under attack of a untrustworthy villain. This marks the change of the gangster landscape where the old gangster has no future. On his way to freedom in Italy he passes the port of Marseille where he is invited by a honorable gangster to perform in one more heist for another honorable gangster. But of course: before escaping to Italy he is spotted and captured by the police. After been set up by the police and haunted by other villains, there is only one way out: clear his honorable name by ultimate sacrifice. Curious about the role of his mistress? Please go see this film.

Based on the novel Un Reglement de Comptes by Jose Giovanni on which legendary auteur Jean-Pierre Melville based his classic 1966 film, one has to admire the balls on Alain Corneau for tackling the same source material. A more colorful adaptation of the Giovanni novel, SECOND BREATH rejects all things black and white. Headlamps are amber and there's even a jaundiced light over black and white crime scene photos. In fact, Corneau's SECOND BREATH isn't just colorful; it's garish. Hues are saturated to stratospheric levels.

Apart from the color and some intensified violence, Corneau's version of SECOND BREATH is an exercise in redundancy for fans of the original Melville film. It's not to say that Corneau's film is bad by any stretch of the imagination. It's simply just not necessary.

This bombed in France last year but one doesn't write off the likes of Alain Corneau and Daniel Auteuil lightly so when it surfaced at the French Film Festival in London I was present and correct. By a strange coincidence Phil Corneau - apparently no connection with Alain despite copping a prestigious French Award - made a short with the same title a few years ago but this is, of course, a remake of the Jean-Pierre Melville entry now just over forty years old. Daniel Auteuil is indisputably a superior actor to Lino Ventura, who created the role of 'Gu' Minda for Melville but Ventura inhabited the role of Minda in a way that appears beyond Auteuil though honors are divided more or less evenly between Paul Meurisse and Michel Blanc in the role of the intrepid cop determined to bring Minda down. The third lead, Monica Belucci is, of course, a joke as an actress and there's a woeful lack of chemistry between her and Auteuil - or indeed anyone with whom she shares a scene. Jacques Dutronc is arguably the best actor on display or, more accurately, the actor who best adapts his style to this particular film. Corneau opted for a bizarre color, something between Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy and South Pacific and if, as seems probably, he did so inn order that the final sequence, over the end credits, could revert to a 'normal' color and make the point that there is indeed a 'normal' i.e. non-gangster world out there it seems an awful lot of trouble to make such a small point. Worth a look. Just.