TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

peterosenau By the end of 1971, "Dirty Harry" was released in the US, and "Sans mobile apparent" in France. Both do have clear similarities. One of the two was a groundbreaking cop-thriller, paving the way for the genre, the other one was quickly forgotten. Guess who is who?Nice: A sniper kills four people. Ace cop Carella is searching for the missing link between the victims.This is all you need to say about the plot, there is really not much more about it. Sure, the screenplay tries to add various aspects, but fails miserably. The biggest letdown is Carella himself. I've rarely seen an uber-cop as boring as him. He is noteworthy because he continuously washes his hand, and he is apparently the best marksman in the world (ridiculously exaggerated in one certain scene). But that's about it. There is a difference between being cool and annoying. I'm not sure Trintignant knew. Either he was bored to death when shooting this, or he was just wooden – I'd rather go for the first option. But then there are two instances in the movie when he smiles – this is so unintentionally funny it almost hurts. Well, to his defense, the screenplay just doesn't have anything in store for his character. Totally implausible he were in love with one of the victims (is Nice that small?) and would even quit duty at the end of the movie. This is not working at all. By 1971 the Italians did great "dirty cop" thrillers with Franco Nero, and the aforementioned "Dirty Harry" was in the starting blocks – compared to those charismatic guys Monsieur Carella is an utter disappointment. It's just not enough to have a title cards trying to sell that guy as a bad-ass adventurer… The screenplay does have a reasonable pace, at least enough to avoid total boredom. But the victims are killed quickly and you can tell minutes in advance who'll be next. Just in very few sequences some real tension and speed can be found, otherwise this is just tedious and resembles a TV procedural. The missing link then arrives out of the blue and is totally far-fetched. A poor excuse to connect the random victims, just to drag out the police investigation. No surprise then that the finale is just as rushed and constructed as the rest of the plot, failing to provide any tension.Of course it's not all bad. The Mediterranean scenery is quite nice (let's forget about the shaky helicopter shots in the beginning), Ennio Morricone provides a very cool score. In a small role we get to see Laura Antonelli, whose striking beauty and fragility is quite memorable. Unfortunately she kind of overacts in one particular scene, but otherwise she is very convincing and a better screenplay would have capitalized on her character. And I basically liked the real-time approach in some sequences, but it's just done too rarely and without too much effect.Overall I could recommend this to die-hard fans of Trintignant only. Anyone who just wants to see a good cop thriller should avoid it. There are plenty of better alternatives out there.

vostf Imagine you have a fine cast, an interesting crime story, a great location - Nice, the "capital" of the French Riviera - and, last but not least, Ennio Morricone to score the whole lot. How can you possibly botch it? Well the opening credits give you the answer with a very shaky, ill-framed helicopter shot of the Riviera around Nice. It takes a bad director to request this kind of (costly) shot and not make sure it will be good. It takes a very bad director to accept such poor images into the final cut - the simple thought of the contrast between the wonderful landscape and the horrendous camera work still makes me ill at ease. A hackneyed postcard montage would have been better.Do I really need to elaborate on all the ugly work a very bad director can do? Just watch his cameo (67min into the movie), and see for yourself how pretentious the guy looks. Basically the choice to over-edit the script fatally leads to a boring editing where scenes are just put together in line. No consistent inner rhythm can result from such a lazy approach to film-making. Nothing builds up, and worst of all, the script falls apart by giving you the answer way before the end.Actually, more than 20 minutes before the ending, all of a sudden, we are explained the mysterious link between the murders, something that occurred 8 years before. It soon becomes obvious what is the motive for this shooting spree, but it takes the bright head detective a very long time to close the now ludicrous investigation: with or without a lead the Police doesn't know what to do.Sans mobile apparent - An Elusive Motive - is so bad that nobody is able to shine. For Trintignant, the only consistent character trait is that he always wash his hands (must be some kind of powerful biblical reference) and Jean-Pierre Marielle is either miscast or awfully misdirected. Even Morricone's interesting score gets tedious after it has been looped in so many times to help fill in all the emotional blanks.Philippe Labro made half a dozen movies. A couple are acceptable pot-boilers, but in every one the pretentious writer-songwriter-director-journalist cannot refrain from overloading the buffer of his poor cinema skills. Yet, as far as I can remember, he never came close to making such a gigantic dud: here he simply misses every mark.

Red-Barracuda A sniper is killing off a series of people who seem to be connected in some way. A detective investigating the case seems to come into contact with the victims shortly before they are dispatched.This is a stylish French murder-mystery set in Nice. It's well served on the acting personnel front. Jean-Louis Trintignant is very good in the central role as the brooding detective; while there is interesting support from others, such Stéphane Audran (leading lady from several Claude Chabrol films) and Jean-Pierre Marielle (who played a memorable flamboyant homosexual private investigator in Dario Argento's giallo Four Flies on Grey Velvet). Another welcome addition is Ennio Morricone's contribution; once again his score is excellent and adds to the atmosphere greatly. The dark story is offset effectively by its beautiful sunny locations too. It adds a bit of glamour to the grime.Sans Mobile Apparent is a well-constructed mystery with good plotting. It's a movie that is screaming out for a DVD transfer, it's one of the stronger French thrillers from the 70's.

bholly72 Jean Louis Trintignant is terrific in this well-plotted and stylish thriller. An investigation of apparently motiveless murders really hits close to home when the former mistress of the detective becomes a victim just minutes after talking to him. The solution to the murders is utterly logical and utterly surprising. Trintgnant has the same magnetic screen presence he had in "Z", but here he actually gets to do things like deliver lines! Dominique Sanda provides the eye-candy. For my money, this was one of the two best thrillers of 1972, the other being Hitchcock's "Frenzy." It doesn't appear to be available on videotape, but if you get a chance to see it, don't miss it.