One of many vehicles for French megastar Alain Delon throughout the late
60s and 70s during a period when he was in exclusive control of his career and,
due to his extreme popularity, initiated whatever project interested him and
hired his own producers and directors.
This served him well in the short term, of course, but the consequence
is that he has a ton of forgettable fluff on his resume while the films that will
really keep him immortal are the handful directed by true auteurs like Rene
Clement, Luchino Visconti and Jean-Pierre Melville. Two Men
in Town is a pretty artless and earnest crime drama featuring Delon as an impossibly
good-hearted convict named Gino who is paroled early thanks to the sentimental
interest an older bureaucrat in the penal system (Jean Gabin) has taken in him. Gino reunites to reality but faces trials at
every turn; past associates who want him to return to crime, cops who doubt his
rehabilitation, and worst of all, a road accident that claims his wife’s
life. The film soberly documents how the
machinery of justice will never slow or change course once set in motion,
whether or not the accused is really guilty.
Gino can’t get a break, while his sponsor and loved ones watch
helplessly as he is propelled towards an execution by guillotine; (believe it
or not, that primitive killing device was in heavy use in France right up until
1981). As with a lot of movies that bear
an anti-death-penalty message, it’s a little unclear if the objection is that
innocent people might get killed by accident or that the entire practice is
inhumane regardless of guilt.
Incidentally, I watched the whole film and I have no idea what the title
refers to; there are several men in the film and several towns.
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