The Umbrella Coup
1980 [FRENCH]
Action / Adventure / Comedy / Crime

Plot summary
Grégoire Lecomte, the unlucky actor anxious to find a "real job", goes to take a screen test for a role of a killer, but gets to mafiosi by mistake. He takes their don for a producer, and they mistake him for a hitman with whom they had an appointment. Deluded Lecomte signs contract with them. He is supposed to kill gun dealer Otto Krampe at his birthday party in Saint-Tropez by piercing him with a cap of the umbrella with a built-in syringe with potassium cyanide. Lecomte is not aware that it has to be a real murder.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Light And Fluffy...and entertaining but don't see it if you hate slapstick.
Dull
Gérard Oury gave us so many successful films over two decades that it's a bit unusual to see a real flop. I don't know what the proceeds were for this one, but it has a lack of rhythm and loose plotting that suggest failure at the box office.
To begin with, the casting: when you can unite Bourvil and de Funès (La grande vadrouille), or Montand and de Funès (La folie des grandeurs), then Pierre Richard and Gérard Jugnot are going to seem small beer in comparison. And the story, so lacking in real tension and pace: an actor has a meeting with a producer, but goes in the wrong door, ends up working for the mob... Haven't we seen this kind of story before?
It's enough to say that Gordon Mitchell has a splendid granite face as the hit-man, and Christine Murillo is very sexy (what happened to her?).