Product Details

• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B00063ASNA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #341,246 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Wildly inconsistent but not a dead loss, August 19, 2007

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Dead Weight ( Le Boulet ) ( El Embolao ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Spain ] (DVD)

17 years after Patrice Leconte's Les Specialistes, glossy comedy-thriller Le Boulet (aka Dead Weight/Ball and Chain) finds Gerard Lanvin shackled and on the run again, this time with Benoît Poelvoorde's prison warder only days before his release in pursuit of a winning lottery ticket that sad sack Poelvoorde's girlfriend has taken with her to a cross-country rally in Africa after walking out on him. Naturally, just getting the ticket would be too easy, so they're also pursued by Djimon Hounsou's relentless cop with an uncanny knack of getting ahead of them at every turn and vengeful psychotic killer José Garcia. Unfortunately the results are somewhat hit-and-miss, not least due to the wildly shifting tone - like many French comedies this seems to take a delight in introducing likeable supporting characters who meet violent ends that aren't particularly amusing, something domestic audiences seem to lap up but which doesn't travel terribly well. It doesn't help that the film's first big setpiece, a delirious and spectacular chase involving a runaway Ferris wheel in the streets of Paris, is much more fun than anything that follows, but overall it's more entertaining than not even if it doesn't live up to its potential.