Half a Chance (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Mar 26, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Patrice LeconteRelease Date(s)
1998 (March 18, 2025)Studio(s)
UGC Fox Distribution (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Beginning around the 1980s, a Hollywood influence began permeating other countries’ film industries, especially in Asia (with the obvious major exceptions of China and India) and most of Europe. Singularly French films, for instance, slowly gave way to Hollywood-style “product,” and while excellent movies still occasionally emanate from France, a depressing share of French product in recent decades consist of dumbed-down genre films in the Hollywood manner.
That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a French movie so “Hollywoodized” as Half a Chance (Une chance sur deux, “One in Two Chances”; posters, but not the film, called it 1 chance sur 2). The film reunites for the last time Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, icons of French cinema and, were it not for their presence, this outrageously over-the-top action thriller/offbeat family comedy would have all the weight and credibility of Death Wish III.
Inveterate luxury car thief Alice (singer Vanessa Paradis) is released from her latest prison sentence, shortly after the death of her mother, who has left Alice a tape cassette confessing on her deathbed that she was conceived by one of two men she fell in love with simultaneously, one of whom must be Alice’s biological father.
The potential fathers are: Léo Brassac (Belmondo), a former commando-turned-luxury car dealer and collector, whose private cache of weapons and ammunition would seemingly make him the world’s 16th largest army; and Julien Vignal (Delon), a gentleman jewel thief-restauranteur, in the manner of Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. As in Hitchcock’s film, both live on the French Riviera, the Côte d’Azur.
The days of wily Fernando Rey long over, the drug trade there has been taken over by the Russian mafia, ruled with an iron fist by Anatoli Sharkov (Valeri Gatayev) and enforced by the unnamed “Trenchcoat Killer” (Aleksandr Yakovlev). They go about killing and blowing up everything in sight, yet the French around them hardly bat an eye. Rogue cop Carella (Eric Defosse), seemingly the only policeman on the case (budget cuts?), has them under investigation, but is up to no good himself for no clear reason.
As Alice, Léo, and Julien become acquainted with one another, the two older men jockeying with paternal affection, and as they sit out the weekend, anxiously planning to have their DNA tested the following Monday, Alice takes a break from her doting, would-be fathers to party at a nearby disco. There she is threatened with rape by some young men, and—oh, bitter irony—in making her getaway steals a car with $50 million of Sharkov drug money kept in an attaché case and (unbelievably) stashed in the trunk. Strangely, Carella makes off with the money, hiding the case in a locker, while Sharkov dispatches his trench-coated torpedo after Alice, Léo, and Julien. After blowing up Léo’s showroom and car collection and Julien’s helicopter, among other things, the two-man army decide to take on the Russian mob!
The movie is reminiscent of—with some of the same flaws—Tough Guys (1986), which reunited old pals and occasional co-stars Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and prefigures later geriatric action thrillers like The Expendables and its sequels. White-haired Belmondo was pushing 65 and Delon 63 but Belmondo especially still looked robust and handsome, even clearly doing a couple of dangerous-looking shots though nothing on the level of his Jackie Chan-esque derring-do from decades before (in films like That Man from Rio). Delon looks older and more tired—this was his last starring film. Belmondo starred in several more films before retiring in the 2000s. He died in 2021 at 88; Delon, after several sad years of ill-health and a battle over his care, died last year, also at 88. Regardless, their rapport is really the only thing that makes Half a Chance bearable.
(When Belmondo died, a veritable state funeral was held, so beloved was the actor. His funeral was one of the most incredible I’ve ever seen, featuring Ennio Morricone’s “Chi Mai” from Belmondo’s film The Professional. You can see it here.)
Both my wife and daughter have an annoying habit of watching videos on their phones or via streaming sped-up two- or three-times normal speed; the room sounds like they’re listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks. This also is rather what Vanessa Paradis’s voice sounds like. She’s fine as an actress, but that voice is very distracting, almost grating, and took a long time to get used to.
I wasn’t expecting the movie I got given its two veteran leads and director Patrice Leconte, whose best-known works, Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser’s Husband are polar opposites from the likes of Half a Chance. Nothing in the story or its characterizations is credible, even on a cartoonish level, with Belmondo’s huge arsenal of “souvenirs” and Delon’s high-tech safecracking equipment absurd beyond belief. The climax has Belmondo and Delon raiding Sharkov’s Blofeld-like compound, the former riding an enormous bulldozer, with spectacular explosions, the two stars machine-gunning down maybe a hundred of Sharkov’s soldiers—where is the Sûreté?
Though the banter between the two great stars is somewhat enjoyable—Belmondo especially seems to be enjoying himself—it’s disconcerting to see Alice take them to a McDonalds, they bemused by their Big Mac value sets. (Intriguingly, neither Belmondo nor Delon directly comment on the food pro or con; their remarks limited to Belmondo spilling ketchup on his shirt.)
Filmed in Panavision and restored in 2K by TF1, Half a Chance looks and, especially, sounds great. It looks like a new movie, not a nearly 28-year-old one, with impressive sharpness, accurate color, and contrast. The DTS-HD Master Audio mix is enthusiastically aggressive, with Alexandre Desplat’s Hollywood-esque scoring and all the gunfire and explosions coming from the surround speakers, putting on a good show. In French only with optional English subtitles, the Blu-ray is Region “A” encoded.
Extras are limited to a “watch party”-type audio commentary (not my kind of thing) with film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, and a theatrical trailer, also in HD.
Overall, Half a Chance is very disappointing, considering Belmondo and Delon virtually defined French cinema of the ‘60s and ‘70s; between them they probably starred in 30 or 40 of the greatest French films of all-time, while also starring in very enjoyable commercial, mainstream vehicles that weren’t idiotic like this film.
- Stuart Galbraith IV