Passeur d'hommes

Un superbe film d’action et de guerre dont la distribution est au top. Malcolm McDowell impressionne grandement dans le rôle d’un SS excentrique dont l’amour incommensurable du Troisième Reich va jusqu’à lui faire porter une croix gammée cousue sur son slip. Un film culte oublié qui a ses faiblesses (comme la caméra brumeuse qui dérange légèrement à la fin) et une bonne dose d’exagérations, mais qui se laisse regarder, captive, choque parfois par sa brutalité et dont l’aventure poignante en fait un parfait plaisir coupable. (29/11/2018)

A Basque shepherd smuggling people across the Pyrenees versus a deranged Nazi who scrapes a match against the armpit of a saluting colleague, slices fingers from the French Resistance, and wears a swastika on his underwear (reportedly the actor's idea to lighten up a dull scene). Unfortunately, the potential of the team—Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Gypsy Saruman, and Kay Lenz’s breasts—is criminally wasted by the king of routine mediocrity, J. Lee Thompson. McDowell, dramatically portraying an SS captain whose dream of a thousand-year Reich will last a few years less, mocking avalanche dangers with a hand grenade and shooting in the mountains, summed it up quite accurately: utter rubbish. (20/07/2023)

The more than 100% deranged SS man played by Malcolm McDowell is really something you don't see every day, except that he seemed to come from a completely different movie, and he, along with other strange characters and scenes, came together in The Passage via a huge coincidence. The whole thing is just such a strange, shapeless patchwork that I strongly disliked. Even Anthony Quinn didn't get the opportunity to do something special this time. (08/06/2016)