User Reviews

The visual style of this rarely seen film looks old-fashioned at first sight; but actually this is what sophisticated movies looked like in these days. They may be dated in terms in technical terms, but they are certainly not regarding their content… In this film, the member of the board of a big company (IME, it's logo strongly resembling IBM), quiet a quiet man, gets fired. He then kills his fellow executives, then dictating to his secretary a testimony in which he claims to put off "computer programs", not people. Moreover, to police he claims to be a machine himself. Is he mad – or is there something else? Enter Swiss journalist René Winterhalter (Michel Piccoli), whose first approach is to call the killer of "victim of ideology". Sound promising? Unfortunately from that point, the film leads virtually into nowhere. Winterhalter finds out about the company's illegal chemical contaminations, escapes an assassination attempt in a hilarious manner, and just when you thought things might be cleared up now, the credits roll. The last part of the film is incredibly unspectacular when compared to the opening, and offers almost no solution. Maybe the director was aiming at an entirely "different" ending; in that purpose he succeeded, but that does not serve the premises the film set in the first place.

**SPOILERS**One of my favorite films because, first, it is very thrilling, and second, Michel Piccoli is my favorite actor. I have seen the film when it came out .. . On the story: An employee gets fired. He drives home, surprising his wife who did not expect him home before lunch. He buys a big gun and drives back to the company where he has worked and kills about half a dozen of his superiors/co-workers. His wife hires a lawyer (MP) who slowly finds out the reason for the shooting spree. Warning: Crucial plot element ! The man did not want to remain silent about a chemical hazards accident that sounded similar to the Times Beach Incident.

I would really love to get a copy of this movie, somehow. I was an extra in the movie. I was the guy that threw the rock in the scene where the mob gather's outside of the house. The film was shot in Jefferson City, Missouri (where I lived) and Fulton, Missouri where I worked in the state mental hospital... Later, I left the job at the mental hospital and ended up doing a job very similar to the "hero" (poor choice of words for this one...) of this movie. This movie goes to some strange places with its plot and characters but it comes together in the end. Having worked on the set I also got to see how careful the cinematography was too. The scene that I was in only takes a few seconds of the movie but it took all day to shoot. They were really careful with lighting and such to make sure that the shadows did not go different directions.