In the past I wrote a review about a closely related movie, "Le Bossu" (The Hunchback). Much of what I wrote then applies also to this movie. It is a sleek, professionally made movie with lavish production values and stunning sets and locations. Marais plays the gallant, dashing hero and Bourvil provides the comic relief : both actors deliver good performances. It is said that Marais performed the many death-defying stunts himself ; if so, he must have been an uncommonly brave man.

I have never read the source material, but by way of educated guess I would suppose that it was unmercifully pruned and pummelled until it fit into the pattern. Surely the movie's resemblance to "Le Bossu" suggests a liberal hand with scissors and glue pot.

Sadly "Le Capitan" contains some easy caricatures - arch-villain Concini, to quote but one example, might just as well spend the whole movie twirling his moustache. Some of the dialogue is so wooden that one could use it to stun an intruder, while the political conspiracy depicted is clueless and inept to the point of surrealism - if these are supposed to be the finest minds in France and Navarra, one shudders to think of the rest...

Still, the movie contains at least one delicious one-liner (watch out for the scene where the hero risks life and limb in order to reach a female prisoner).