Three Men to Destroy (1980)

A professional poker player happens upon a badly injured man in a crashed car and takes him to the hospital, not knowing that the unfortunate gent had been the victim of an assassination attempt. The killers suspect that the dying man must have given out some incriminating information about them and their government employers and set out to make the gambler their next target.Like a few other French thrillers before it, this film certainly owes some debt to Alfred Hitchcock with its story of an innocent man thrust into the middle of a dangerous situation where criminals try to hunt him down and kill him. It's not the most original of story-lines but this fast-paced film remains an enjoyable watch. There is enough action and incident punctuated through its run-time to ensure it never gets boring, such as an exciting car chase through the streets of Paris, a keyhole assassination, an attempted drowning on a crowded beach and a little bit of nudity courtesy of Italian actress Dalila Di Lazzaro who will be familiar to Euro genre fans for her roles in cult items such as Phenomena (1985). But it's really Alain Delon's movie ultimately. The role probably doesn't stretch him too much but he is quite a cool actor and holds things together pretty well I thought. On the whole, I found this to be a very enjoyable movie; it may not have brought anything especially new to the table but it did the job well enough for me.

A professional gambler on his way to the gambling house saved a guy who crashed on the countryside road and by not asked or checked first whether that guy was wounded badly or where his wounds were, he just hauled him out of the car, and again, didn't pay any attention to anything else. He drove and sent the he-thought-the-guy-was-just-a wounded-car-crash-survivor and a complete stranger to the hospital emergency. And again, the nurse and the two emergency workers didn't pay any attention to the condition of the guy in the poker gambler's car, just hauled him to the gurney without checking first what the condition of that person in the car with so much blood, until after you-don't-know-how-long, a doctor came out announced the guy they brought in had two fatal gunshot wounds. What kind of French hospital in the 80s was this? Emergency room didn't seem to have anything emergent. And the gambler didn't even pay any attention to his car's backseats, the blood on the seats and the floor? Anyway, the most stupid scenario was the gambler didn't pay any attention to the guy he helped sending to the hospital, he didn't witnessed the actual killing or assassination of that guy, why those two so-called hit-man bozos would bother to have him eliminated? For what? The gambler didn't even looked at the face of the wounded guy, albeit linked him as one of the assassinated three men.Furthermore, what's the purpose behind these killings? The French screenplay writers usually drafted stupid scripts without any logic. Delon just produced and played those cool but stupid roles with his handsome face.This is such a stupid and mindless film with non-exist logic. If you could watch on or even finish it, you'd better have your I.Q. re-tested.

Ultimately this is surely much ado about nothing but Delon is great, Dalila Di Lazzaro plays his girlfriend and if she doesn't smoulder quite as she does in 1977s, 'The Pyjama Girl Case, she certainly does well enough to hold one's attention. Indeed, I found this likable from the very start, as we struggle to work out what is going on, only to eventually discover that most of those in the film are similarly confused. The Gaullist figure at the centre of things, who is probably more confused and deluded than anyone else, is great fun and although this tough, sexy, thriller is by no means a comedy, there are some nice touches that raise at least a smile. Always involving, ever moving with some excellent sequences, this keeps you guessing till the end.

I liked this, some negative comments on this board notwithstanding... I thought the action scenes were not bad for an 80s movie. It's obviously an attempt to make a Hollywood-style action flick. While there were probably better action/thriller flicks made in the 80s, I can think of many, many worse ones! Having seen it for the first time when I was 18, the high point quite obviously was Dalila Di Lazzaro's chest, a memorable scene… :) I bought a VHS copy on Ebay a few years ago, in German – that's all I could find.What was the car he drove at the beginning of the movie, by the way? A Lancia Gamma.As for the comment about Delon wearing white socks with black pants, that actually was considered somewhat fashionable in Europe of the 80s…. :)