Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

evening1 This is the kind of film about which one yearns to have a conversation. I viewed it myself, on Turner Classic Movies, so this review is my effort to make some sense of a superlative but puzzling viewing experience. Gu, whose chiseled mug seems made for this role, is a protagonist unlike any other. We sympathize with him from the start, as his lack of athleticism threatens his life of crime in the earliest frames of this dusky film. What is he doing, leaping across tall buildings -- anyway? Director Melville never quite spells it -- or anything else in this film -- out. But we care for Gu from the start. Yet he is a cold-blooded killer of guys both good and bad. With sniper-like sangfroid, he thinks nothing of taking out a motorcycle cop accompanying an armored car. As the doomed Inspector Fardiano sneers, is he planning on adopting two slain cops' five kids? Somehow Melville makes us care about this villain, whose only smile he reserves for his glamorous and enigmatic sister Manouche (Christine Fabrega). "You deserved better," he tells her toward the end of the movie. Earlier, they embrace passionately. What gives here?? Again, hints are the most we receive from Melville. Ventura's performance is first-rate. Our eyes never stray from his presence, whether he is commandeering a pair of hapless petty thieves who have come to threaten Manouche or allowing himself, fatefully, the luxury of chewing on a candy at a game of petanque near the Mediterranean coast. Equally compelling is Commissioner Blot, played with unceasing panache by Paul Meurisse, who, only the year before, appeared in "Diabolique."Blot's character, like all the others in this film, is somewhat puzzling. He seems confident about outsmarting the bad guys -- "not everyone can have an inquiring mind." Yet, as Manouche predicts, he and his men in blue are easily duped. Witness the incredible scene when Gu, seemingly comatose from torture as he lies in a hospital bed, gives his badged overseer the slip. Yes, Manouche knew of what she spoke. Once the evil and reputation-obsessed Gu receives his comeuppance, Blot deprives Manouche of a bit of succor. Apparently he realized she wasn't as clean as she came across. Yet he drops the loathsome notebook on the ground for the benefit of the press corps. One shudders at the implications of that move. Won't it serve to stir the pot, keeping the bad guys and the cops at each others' throats? Well, without that I guess we wouldn't have noirs and policiers. The never-ending cat and mouse game carries on. And what of the platinum? Gu hid his share well. Perhaps, in a way, he provided for Manouche and her stolid bodyguard Alban (Michael Constantin) after all.I have seen one other noir by Melville ("Le Doulus"), which was interesting but made far less sense than this production. Melville is a director I'd definitely like to follow -- ideally in the company of other film buffs who savor examination and discussion!CODA: If this film seems to really "get" the bad guys, maybe that's because the author of the novel that inspired it was a truly evil man. Read the Wikipedia entry for Jose Giovanni and weep -- or perhaps feel guilty for liking this film so much.

Rick James It may not be true as Bertrand Tavernier asserts in the add-on DVD special that "Second Wind" (the correct idiomatic translation) made further crime movies superfluous, but this is a brilliant example of the genre. The subtitles do not do justice to the dialog that is typically French- wordy but still clever and provocative. Inspector Blot, the Joe Friday/Jack Web emulator, has the most good lines, but they are throughout. The casting is as good as you could get. Shooting in black and white was essential to focus viewers on the story, the characters and the script. Even the Arch of Triumph looks appropriately raw and menacing: at no point do you think how pretty France is, only how dreary and monotonous are the streets, and how rugged the rocks, the perfect backdrop to this depiction of remorseless selfishness and cruelty that illustrates that stories do not have to be compact and tidy to be compelling.

MisterWhiplash I had seen nearly everything that is readily available from Jean-Pierre Melville in the United States by the time I got to Le Deuxieme soufflé, which may be part of why I didn't respond overwhelmingly to it. After such challenging, methodical and precisely existential crime masterpieces as Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob le flambeur and the underrated Le Doulos, this one just seemed to not pack the same kind of punch that the others did. Again, this may be the fault on the viewer for seeing this last among his mostly thriller-oriented oeuvre, but perhaps it's also some of Melville's fault too; again and again, as the dedicated and ruthless auteur that he was (one of the great French directors I would argue), he kept coming back to men in trench-coats with grim expressions figuring out on both sides- criminal and detective- of how to plot the next move or, for the former, how to keep from the fatalism of the plot.Which, for Melville, is something that comes second nature. The difference, perhaps, in this case is that the length (a whopping two and a half hours, longer than both The Red Circle and Army of Shadows) and the amount of details in the structure of the story (i.e. what happened on such and such a day made this happened could've been snipped, albeit I can't pinpoint to which) bog down some of the more successful aspects to the picture. Which is also to say that for all of its minor misgivings, Le Deuxieme soufflé (or, simply, The Second Breath) is near-classic Melville, with nail-bitingly tense suspense scenes like the opening escape from the prison and the latter heist sequence- somewhat more obvious and less coolly ambitious as Red Circle.There's the amazing cinematography as well, a trademark of Melville and his crew to make things gritty but smooth in precision and style, and the performances from Paul Meurisse as the Detective (maybe my favorite performance of the picture just for the intelligence he imbues in the character), and Lino Ventura as one of the quintessential Melville anti-heroes, Gu, the convict who wants in on the big 200 million heist. And even as it could be Melville's most "talky" picture after Bob le flambeur (which is relative to how pleasantly light, or how seemingly sparse, his films are with dialog), when the characters speak it's to the point of with some quotable spunk to them.There's an icy, unspoken angst in Melville's world of criminals, almost questioning but still true to the notion of the 'policier', where you'd want the criminals to get away with it if the detective wasn't so doggone determined all the time. It's another fine piece of film-making from the director, just not an all-time-top flick - more along the lines of Un flic. 8.5/10

mackjay2 Painstaking detail and near-real-time narrative pace characterize THE SECOND BREATH (WIND). This is another in Melville's series of caper films in which the viewer is shown the entire process of planning and executing the crime. But, like the director's other fine films, this one is also about the characters. Most of the detail is used to bring insight into these desperate men, especially the main protagonist. On several occasions, Melville has given us a nearly washed-up criminal as a main character and here we are given one of the hardest-boiled examples: Gustave "Gu" Minda (Lino Ventura). At the film's outset, Gu escapes from prison and turns violently on one of his fellow escapees. This sets the tone for the entire narrative of distrust and double-crossing. Gu is interesting to us, but not truly sympathetic. Desperate for his 'second wind', Gu plans to accumulate enough money to leave France, preferably with his mistress, and avoid re-capture. When a fellow crime-boss offers him a part in his latest robbery caper, Gu takes him up. The film alternates between Gu and Commissaire Blot (Paul Meurisse) the police chief who is as committed to capturing Gu as Gu is to escaping. We need not be too concerned with the final outcome: it's pretty clear what it will be. Gu is ultimately a pathetic man, a sort of 'tragic criminal' whose fall from power leaves him disillusioned and worthless. This is one of Melville's more violent tales. To achieve his ends, Gu does not shy away from cold-blooded murder in more than one scene. A latter-day Film Noir in which fate plays a major role, it's not Melville's best film, but it deserves to be seen by anyone interested in this director.