The Marseille Contract

Removing the smoothly quipping Anthony Quinn from the plot for a few dozen minutes or playing carnival music during a serpentine chase between a Porsche 911 and an Alfa Romeo Montreal—there are just three words I’d like to say to Robert Parrish about that. Thankfully, there’s a Michael Caine band-aid, delivering his suave assassin with typical elegance. As for activities stemming from the drug business in the capital of Provence, Frankenheimer and Popeye were much more thorough a year later. Oh, and the first word of those three is "Go." (2022.08.31)

It’s like the English version of The French Connection. Both Quinn and Caine are excellent, the story is interesting and suspenseful, and the scenes like the car chase are flawless. Only the ending could have been more gripping. Very decent four stars. (2011.01.17)

The Marseille Contract is a kind of British reaction to The French Connection, only that Friedkin's almost documentary realism has been replaced by the playfulness and cheapness of sixth-rate crime films. Nothing against it, the idea is great, but the execution could have had more pull. And it's a pity how the film doesn't manage to tell both lines of the two main characters at the same time, so for the first half hour it is purely about Anthony Quinn's character, and once Michael Caine comes on the scene, Quinn practically disappears from the plot and later vice versa. That said, I do appreciate the amazing work with the locations of French cities and Douglas Slocombe's camerawork; today it would be all green screen. (2022.09.10)