Costa-Gavras's second feature. He directed his own adaptation of a novel by Jean-Pierre Chabrol.
The film tracks a maquis (World War 2 French resistance rural guerilla group) as it frees some death-row inmates from a gaol, robs a bank of a million francs and is tasked with blowing up a pass in the hills which gets a bit The Wages of Fear (1953). Frisson is notionally added by them accidentally liberating a thirteenth man from the gaol (Michel Piccoli) who professes to be nonpartisan despite wearing German boots. The pace is frenetic, relentless, the opposite of The Confession (1970). We learn that Frenchman can only think and talk about war and sex, and only think about war when they have to. (What about food?)
The film concludes with a bravura shot of Piccoli hanging off a bridge that looks like a scaled-up Meccano set, Nazis overhead shooting down at him; a more eloquent expression of what Europa (1991) reached for.
The cinematography by Jean Tournier (The Train (1964), The Sleeping Car Murder (1965), The Day of the Jackal (1973)) is good.
Howard Thompson at the New York Times: frenzied vitality. Costa-Gavras "should have whittled his pacifist down to size."
