Cold Sweat (1970)

Original title: De la part des copains

Korean War veteran Joe Martin (Charles Bronson) is living with his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullmann) and her daughter Michèle (Yannick Delulle) at the Côte D’Azur, working his own small boat charter service. The marriage seems somewhat tense thanks to Joe suffering from what we’d now call PTSD. He’s drinking too much and holds back emotionally. As it turns out when one a rather nasty character from Joe’s past named Whitey (Michel Constantin) turns up one summer evening, Joe has also been holding back some facts from his past, as well as his actual name.

You see, seven years ago, he was part of break-out from a military prison organized by one of his former commanding officers, one Captain Ross (the very American James Mason). When Katanga (Jean Topart), one of the other members of the group, murdered a random cop for not much of a reason during the break-out, Joe was having none of it, simply taking off with the escape car, leaving the rest of the men to fend for themselves.

For some reason, Whitey really needs Joe’s boat now, to transport something to or from a Turkish vessel anchored somewhere in the area, and he’s certainly not the kind of guy unwilling to threaten a wife and a kid (if available). Joe, on the other hand, is not the kind of guy to tolerate that very well, killing Whitey and getting rid of his body rather efficiently – with a little help from Fabienne.

Of course, this is not he end of the couple’s problems, for soon enough, the rest of the former break-out gang – Ross, Katanga, and one Gelardi (Luigi Pistilli), turn up. They, too are very much into threatening families and really want Joe’s boat, as well as, probably, a bit of vengeance. So our protagonist agrees to their demands, until the right moment comes to make his displeasure known more violently.

In theory, Cold Sweat is a French production, but it’s one of those international joints that really don’t feel specifically regional apart from its setting. The cast is a merry mixture of people from all over the globe, as is good tradition in European genre filmmaking of this era. Rather less common in this sort of thing, the director isn’t French or Italian but veteran British filmmaker Terence Young.

The script, indeed written by two Frenchmen, is based on a novel by Richard Matheson and follows the Gold Medal paperback style of late 60s, early 70s thriller, something a lot of French filmmakers (and one assumes producers) seem to have admired quite a bit. For good reasons, too, because this style of the thriller, with focussed plots that still manage to squeeze in some surprisingly deep characterization, and an update of a noirish philosophical outlook tend to adapt really rather well to the screen, often without there being too big of a need for major changes. Unfortunately, I can’t say if the film at hand does actually make many changes to the plot, because this is one of the Matheson books I’ve never gotten around to reading.

As it stands on screen, it’s a fine bit of early 70s thriller in any case, with sharp plotting, not terribly deep but effective characterization and a real sense for the tense set-up followed by a follow-through that always escalates the drama of any given situation. As we all know, Young was a wonderful director for this kind of thing, usually not showing himself beholden to the stodgier style of some of his British contemporaries but using the increased technical possibilities of changing times in filmmaking to the fullest.

Particularly the film’s final act where is Joe racing and scrabbling to save his loved ones through ever increasing problems and dangers is absolutely fantastic. There’s a brilliantly done car race against the clock that isn’t even the film’s proper climax to enjoy, for example. The sequence is edited and shot so sharply, Young can even check in on the quieter tension between the surviving rest of the characters during it without lessening its impact, instead ratcheting up the suspense with this device, as it is meant to do but all too often doesn’t.

Acting-wise, Cold Sweat is mostly a fine proposition, the cast of character actors performing just as good as you can expect them to (which is why people like I love character actors often more than the proper movie stars – consistency and quiet capability is the thing), Bronson’s suggesting much about Joe’s inner life by tensing and untensing his shoulders (seriously) and also gets some pretty fun tough guy lines, while Ullmann provides a stock character with actual life. The only problem spot here is James Mason, or rather, James Mason as played by his bad, oh so bad, American accent, a thing so awesome (like giant tentacled monsters are awesome) it apparently does not leave room for much of an actual performance.

But then, he would have been dubbed by someone just as bad in most Italian movies, so we do at least get to experience what this great actor believed Americans sound like.

Cold Sweat is obviously still a wonderful piece of European/International thriller.