Niki Mueller (El-Rey)
I like conspiracy thriller, like The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor for example, but this one is my absolute favorite. You get an intelligent, minimalist, well written, well acted Suspense Thriller with a great Ennio Morricone Soundtrack. I think this Soundtrack is one of his best, and i am a big Morricone Fan.The Flair and Style of this Movie is typical European 70ies, like the Costa-Gavras Movies (Z, The Confession). This Movie is almost documentary-like and it knows how to build an enormous tension all the way up to the end. You can feel the paranoia in this movie.There is so much more to tell about the movie, but i always think that is better to know less about a movie before you watch them, just to be surprised what happen.
Bob Taylor
Henri Verneuil represented the commercial cinema in France from 1960-1980. Always strong at the box-office, and usually telling dramatic and suspenseful tales of casino robberies, mafia score-settling and World War II battles, Verneuil could be counted on to give us two solid hours of entertainment on Saturday night. He worked with the cream of the male actors of his day: Gabin, Belmondo, Fernandel, Delon, Sharif, Anthony Quinn. I... comme Icare is the only time he directed Yves Montand. It's an oddly static film, taking place mainly in offices and conference rooms, containing not one chase scene and hardly any violence.Montand gives a good performance, if somewhat dry, and he is well supported by the other actors. I couldn't help wondering what Costa-Gavras could have done with this story, on the basis of Z (the Lambrakis assassination) and L'aveu (the torture of Artur London in Czechoslovakia by Stalinists).
Dominik Dukat
In every aspect a true classic. Brilliant script, good camera work plus the outraging performance of the french actors. I see no necessity whatsoever to draw a comparison to "JFK" as it was produced 22 years earlier and forms part of a completely different movie genre. Especially enjoyable is also the music in the picture which was surprisingly written by Ennio Morricone and is as usual a delightful experience.Interesting: Watching the credits at the end, it can be observed that the final shot has the form of an I. "I as In Icarus".
Nicholas Rhodes
Henri Verneuil was one of France's top movie makers and this film is a prime example of that. It is based on the JFK assassination but takes place in a fictitious country ( not France or America ) and treats the whole affair in great detail. Although the language of the film is French, the décors are deliberately impersonal and not typical of any country or indeed typical of all countries (!! if you see what I mean ) Yves Montand is excellent as the investigator, I find this kind of role suits him well just as in Police Python 357 - a solitary man making tendious and throrough investigations The film is constructed in such a way that you never get bored even through the phsychological test sequence which is admittedly a little over long. The film has not been shown on French TV for some time and is not available on DVD here but I see Police Python 357 appears recently on DVD so I 'm sure that I comme Icare will surely follow suit.
