This movie is not for everyone, but I think it is a 70's classic. Directed by Romain Gary, and starring his wife Jean Seberg (just after her nervous breakdown), this is a strange, dreamlike, bizarre film. There are some great moments in this film- sort of a cross between a spaghetti western, ClockWork Orange and Performance. Jean Seberg herself is perfectly cast in this as the bored housewife Emily looking for a thrill--and off to Pakistan (well, OK it was filmed in Spain) she goes! The renegade she meets, Brad Killian (name obviously in reference to his dedicated profession of killing every drug runner he can find), is played by the wonderful Stephen Boyd. In his leather-clad outfit and wild hair, he makes for a great anti-hero as he seduces Emily, and turns the cards on her husband, played by the excellent James Mason. The music is amazing, and there are a host of classic Italian character actors in this flick as the bad guys. Oh, and Curd Jergens shows up too! It's a great 70's trip - I highly recommend this if you can track it down on IOFFER.

Fascinating both in terms of its structural approach to genre, subversive political themes, and how it obliquely reflects the intensely personal lives of the director/writer and star. Seberg's still then-husband directs her in some tightly scripted and intimate scenes regarding themes of infidelity. And this while such issues and an unplanned pregnancy by another man became public thanks to politically motivated interference by the FBI.There are clear influences from Jean-Pierre Melville and Godard, with a pop art approach to American gangster iconography. The Brad KILLian anti-hero being reminiscent of Lemmy Caution, or even Caine's Carter in a manner. The heroin-busting plot is cursory, but Gary's slyly scripted dialogue contains radical subtext and some hilariously overt depictions of native insurgency, with Afghani Sufis and a kid nicknamed Che Guevara.Gary shoots some early night scenes with Seberg in dark clothing, accentuating her beautiful profile and bright hair as if floating in space. Chiaroscuro lighting returns later in the film, but there are also interesting sequences of filmed executions being repeated for thematic emphasis. Aldo Sambrell's familiar genre presence is also used to great effect, despite it being not much more than an extended cameo and glorious execution.There is also an insane pop art musical interlude that cuts between the heroin dealers discussing canine-human pornography and dealing to children with scenes of Seberg and Boyd engaging in a strangely negotiated coupling of their own. All of which is scored by none other than Memphis Slim on piano, giving a bluesy vocal rendition of the theme song that contrasts well with Edda Dell'Orso and Doris Troy's.**************************spoiler below******************************It isn't until the likes of Johnnie To, John Woo, Tarantino and of course Scorsese that we would see genre played with in quite the same masterful manner and with such witty layers. One need only watch James Mason's dying visions of machine-gunned, undead gangsters, Sufi-leaping heavenward to understand that what they are watching is not a typical formulaic genre entry.

An extremely remarkable feature, partly because of Romain Gary's script, the husband of Jean Seberg, which does not appear from the information. This multi-award winner writer (of for instance *The Roots of Heaven* (directed by John Huston with Errol Flynn) shot himself December 2nd 1980 one year after the suicide of his wife Jean Seberg, who was hounded to death by the FBI for no valid reason at all. This film was maybe their last major collaboration, and the script (the story of the film) is ingenious, James Mason in the final *ballet* scene seeing his worst nightmare come true. Romain Gary was a survivor of the Holocaust, which is touchingly described in his autobiography "Promise at Dawn", perhaps the most brilliant and moving epic of a mother ever written, in which every word is true.

An absolutely dire thriller about an ex-Interpol agent turned assassin who tries to wipe out porn merchants and drug dealers in Pakistan. This is confusing, nasty and atrociously directed, with an extremely high death rate but little else. Stephen Boyd must have wondered what he had done wrong to go from the giddy heights of Ben Hur to this shambolic mess. As for James Mason, it's almost enough to make a grown man cry to see such a fine actor in such garbage.