I have always loved this film since I discovered it, back in 1981. We don't see such features anymore. I would have never guessed to watch Michel Constantin and Ted De Corsia - the two best heavies for their own movie industry - together in the same film. And nearly in the same sequence. I will also say that Roy Scheider plays here a role, a character which reminds me the one the had in MARATHON MAN, WAGES OF FEAR, L'ATTENTAT, roles where he is not the lead but a character who is important and who also dies before the end.

Dear Jacques Deray,your film The Outside Man was a really interesting, unusual and slightly boring 70s thriller. The plot was great. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a cold-blooded French assassin who is in LA to murder a mafioso. After completing his job easily at the mafioso's home, he is intrigued by the fact that the mafioso's family releases wrong and misleading physical specifications about him to the media. He is also pursued by another man (Roy Schneider) who is trying to kill him. Ann Margaret is a nude dancer with a heart of gold who helps Trintignant acquire a passport to return to France.Trintignant's character is in a state of disarray and he is reticent to American culture while he is on the run - he meets bikers, a Jesus freak and a single mom and her kid with whom he shares a TV dinner. The TV dinner scene was quite good but the scenes with the Jesus freak and the bikers were poorly written.The two females in the film - Ann Margaret and Angie Dickinson are used as sex objects. There are many nude scenes including a pretty erotic nude lesbian dance inside a bar. The dancer's bodies were painted white! Michel Constantin being dragged by a funeral car across a lawn animates a dreary movie and a ridiculous shootout at the mafioso's funeral.The parts were better than the sum. Even though it is an English language film, the film has a French feel to it. Maybe you were aiming for a Melville atmosphere, Jacques. But Michel Le Grand's loud funky score, the gaudy locales and the poor writing ruined your ambitious project.Best Regards, Pimpin.(6/10)

Very dull hit-man 70's film that is partly inept and slow-going. Jean-Louis Trintignant is a monotonous, wooden hit-man who gets double crossed. He's followed by Roy Scheider, who can't seem to shoot straight. The only reason to sit through this dull film is Ann Margaret, who is super hot in a white wig, looking like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Angie Dickinson isn't bad either.Also it's nice to see Downtown Los Angeles and Venice Beach in their 70's decrepitude (A Venice Beach Amusement Pier in decay, the old, one-level LAX airport, Beverly Wilshire Hotel, skid row, Tower Records on Sunset). Story is lacking, so is the action, but look out for an assortment of TV and film characters from the era ((Jackie Earle Haley, Alex Rocco, Talia Shire as a make-up girl, John Hillerman, etc.).

This had all the makings for a first rate international crime action drama. There is a good premise, of a hit-man agreeing to off a powerful crime boss to pay off a debt, only to discover it was a set-up with himself marked for death, a first-rate cast, a "Shaft"-inspired score by Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand, and excellent location photography which captures the Los Angeles landscape. So why doesn't this film work? For one thing, it never settles on a tone, and it swerves between character study to crime drama and doesn't have enough of either. The character being studied is impossible to care about anyway, the crime aspects are never fully explored, and most the action scenes are mostly ordinary. Even the climactic shootout isn't all that exciting, in spite of happening in a clever location. The result is that the film is usually depressing. There are a few good scenes and the cast is more than up to the task. However, most of the actors are given little to do. In the lead, the great French actor Jean- Louis Trintignant does little more than glower or sulk, making this one of his less memorable performances. Ann Margaret is beautiful, but her role is merely set decoration. Georgia Engel steals the show as a ditsy housewife who innocently gets caught up in the double cross and violence, but she doesn't have that large of a role. The truth is, she's the only person who evokes any sympathy, with everyone else being either a vicious criminal, an inept cop, or an apathetic bystander. That wasn't an unusual situation in 1970's crime dramas, but it doesn't make for exciting viewing. Some people like this movie a lot, so if you're really interested, judge for yourself, but don't complain if you were also disappointed.