Midweek Mention... A Man of Action

A Man of Action

Cris: This is a man of action. Yes. We are looking at him. Look at him

He's such a handsome man of

Dan: at him. Look at him. He's such a handsome

man

Cris: although it he probably is around your age

Dan: is around your age.

Cris: Yes, but

Sidey: but more Spanish.

Cris: more Spanish and living in, well, in the action of the movie happens in Paris.

Sidey: It sure does. It's a sort of a true story, a biopic

Cris: I think this is going

Sidey: a film opens with a loosely based on, I immediately think it's all lies.

But that's not the case. This is, some of this is real. I,

Dan: I will immediately think this is going to be better.

Sidey: Yeah,

So there's facts and some artistic license thrown in. But mainly facts. This

Dan: facts. This is all pretty much true.

Apart from the

Sidey: the big It's Lucio I can't It It Turbe?

Cris: It's Lucio, I can't, Iturbe?

Dan: Or it's Yeah, Turby.

Sidey: something like

Cris: Lucio Iturba or something like that. Ituruba or something like that.

He's from Navarra, from the Navarra region of

Dan: Turbine.

Cris: Spain.

Sidey: Yeah.

and he's, we're introduced to him right at the beginning of the film in a flash forward

Cris: Yes

Sidey: of he and his partner, who's a very attractive young lady, are trying to make it through, is it a station?

Cris: station?

Airport,

Sidey: An airport.

Cris: Paris airport

Sidey: And he's being pursued by a Sort of, I think you're supposed to believe he's a sort of laughably incompetent kind of detective who's on his

Dan: And to

Sidey: And

Cris: Inspector Costello

Sidey: but in this case, they looks like they've got him cornered and what he does is he has a, a kind of a hold all within which he reaches in, pulls out a fistful of dollars.

And trucks him in the air and there's a load of sort of boy scouty type people and everyone then sort of going crazy, like trying to

Cris: all filmed in slow motion

Right At the beginning.

Sidey: He's, you think, because it doesn't show you the outcome of it, able to escape this bit,

Dan: escape this bit. And then we get to,

Cris: No, no, just the beginning. Just this

Dan: back

start of it

Sidey: and then we get, so then we're taken back to the start of it and the origin of what he's been up to and how it's. come to pass that they've got all this money.

Cris: money. Yes, but initially when it goes back, it goes back in time and it shows him as a young man in this village. And he's basically stealing some onions and some vegetables from some farmer who swears at him with a traditional Iho de puta, which means son of a bitch in,

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: He's shooting a shotgun out of him. Yeah.

Cris: he, he shoots at him twice.

And then we find out that his father is terminally ill or severely, I don't know,

Sidey: got tuberculosis or something like that. He's sort of sort of horribly dying a painful death in bed and he says to the lad you're the only one in the house who's going to do this for me. And it doesn't say and then, but then he goes out, he goes to the bank and he says, we need money. We need money for morphine and dad's in a lot of pain and he's obviously desperate and the guy says, look, I'm sorry, but you know, we're not the charity.

We can't just give you money and he says, I'll work it off and the guy's like, look, you know. There's nothing we can do. So he pulls out a knife and it's his first kind of bank robbery heist. But he is just a young kid and the, the, the bank manager dude is looking at him and he just pisses himself.

Cris: As in actual pisses

Sidey: piss comes down his trousers, you know, out and forth and they look and he says, look, just leave, just off.

Like, you know, you know,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, this is young

Dan: you did your first kind of hold up knife robbery in a garage, how old was you?

Sidey: I was first year at secondary school.

Dan: First year. And what about you, Chris?

You must have started younger. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was a bit of a late developer before I mugged

Sidey: And I didn't piss myself.

Made of stronger stuff.

Dan: Well, I must admit, it must have been something to do with the the curry I had. But I was a bit loose bowed. But yeah, there you go.

Sidey: So that's his, that's his first one his first attempt at a hold up. It doesn't go, it doesn't go well.

Cris: at a hold up that doesn't go well. We assume then that Dad

Dan: Right. We assume then that Dad has passed on during these ten

Sidey: Yeah, he's gone.

Yeah

Cris: And the French the, in Spain, there's a civil war going and is there's all sorts of political unrest and people, yeah, the people don't know what is what and who is who.

And she goes to to Paris to work as a. May I think, or something like that. And he needs to go fulfill his military service. That's right. And she says to him, you go and do your military service, and when you get out, when you finish, you come and see me and we'll have a life in Paris. You will do something.

And then forward, he ends up in Paris, but he's deserted.

Sidey: Yeah, he's, he is kind of. Going for him in Paris, but he does stumble upon he's got all these ideals.

He's kind of um he's not radicalized or anything, but he he doesn't like the setup in Spain and but that first instance of him trying to rob a bank. Motivated to help someone. Motivated to help his father and and so he stumbles across all these protests that are going on in France, student protests and he sees these other people, disenfranchised people, who are also unhappy about what's going on loads of pamphlets being passed around and all these ideas about, you know, taking power back and all

Dan: Yeah, because you think with that you know, kind of experience where the, the man has stiffed him really in order to help his dad 10 years before and how that kind of manifests itself in his mind, you know?

Does he keep that same

Cris: Well, he had a problem with authority since he said, I don't like to be told what to do.

He clearly states that that's one thing I don't like. And he ends up meeting these Spanish expats in Paris. He works, he starts working with them on building sites and he makes them look bad because he works really hard. And they're like, listen mate, you need to slow down. You don't

Dan: I know the feeling

Cris: you don't, you don't need to to show who's the man.

We slow down. We, we, we all know the rules

Dan: get that a

Sidey: quite threatening about it,

Cris: Yeah. And he's like, no, don't tell me what to do. I'll do what I, what I like. And, and then the guy's like, okay, well what's your ideal, what's your political view? Are you, he's like, well, I think I'm a communist. And then they go through the history lesson with Lenin and this and that.

What do you like? And then. It ends up that he, they said, well, you're not a communist with these beliefs that you have. You're an anarchist.

Right, And

he's, that's the first time he kind of,

Sidey: of. Yeah, so he meets these students as well. One of them is

Cris: Who is very pretty.

Sidey: who's very pretty and they start a romance but she also has these ideals or be it. He's a little bit conflicted at first because she's from a kind of wealthier background and so he sort of raises the question, well, you know, what does your old man, what does your father think about all this stuff? Because she's protesting, but it's like, you know, it's like common people, you know, you could go back to you.

If you didn't like it she's she's like, he wishes the police would hit me harder or something like that. So, so, he's he also, he falls in with this guy. Is it? And this is where he starts to become more. militant, not militant, but like it does proper, it does a bank robbery, like a proper out and out bank robbery with this guy where he convinces him that this is the way to go.

What we need to do is take down the system. The system is corrupt. The system is, is set up to make people fail. So we're going to rob the bank and basically. They portray themselves as like Robin Hood kind of figures that whatever they steal, they will they will just pass that out amongst the rest of the community.

So they're not necessarily robbing for their own benefit. It's to help everyone out and so they do this bank robbery proper like stockings over their face, a couple of shooters, but he goes in and he pisses himself again. He's still yeah, it's a history repeating itself. He's still not quite there.

Cris: not quite there. You can see the guys thinking, I've got

Sidey: You can see the guy's thinking, I could just take that. But the other, Kiko, he's got a rifle and he's pointing at the guy's face. He's like,

Dan: in the guy's face.

Sidey: And the guy, like, takes his hand away.

Dan: So,

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Cris: That. Yeah, that

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Cris: looking for, for that

Sidey: So they've also, it's fallen in with cause there's been this ongoing motif about pamphlets and literature and propaganda.

And so they've got together with this printing house.

Cris: Yes. I think that's after the first few robberies, they end up saying, well, we heard the system, we heard the system, but, and also we are introduced to Costello, who is the inspector and who,

Sidey: They're following them.

Cris: who slowly realizes because obviously they, they, at the beginning, they don't even know how to say everyone on the ground in French.

So they say it half French, half Spanish. There's not that many Spanish immigrants. He said, okay, I know where to find them. There's a raid Costello ends up actually arresting

Lucio.

Sidey: a few times in the movie, yeah.

Cris: does get arrested. There's no proof against him. And he's like, I know you've done it. They looking for the guns.

They end up in his house. They looking for, he's like, I know you've done it. I'm going to find you. I'm going to prove it. Eventually,

Sidey: done it. I'm going to find it. I'm going to prove it eventually. When they

Cris: they have another meeting, they say, well, how are we going to really hurt them? Because bank robberies, we can do a few of them, but we're not really getting enough money to hurt the banks and hurt the

Sidey: yeah They're getting like a hold all of cash, but really it's

Cris: So then, and they have a really good, noble way of splitting the money three ways. One for the anarchist groups in the region. And One for the families of anarchists in prison. And the third, so it's three ways that the last third is for them and their expenses.

Dan: Nice, okay.

Cris: so they're kind of like Robin Hood, but not only would they want to be Robin Hood, they keep the money.

They actually give the money back. So, so they're also being

Sidey: protected

but they, it's good

Dan: somebody supporting the anarchists. You don't hear that enough, do you?

Sidey: They're underfunded quite a lot. Yeah. Funded. So, but they're, but like you say, they're, they're getting a small bounty every time.

It's not

Dan: like the chocolate

Sidey: Yeah. Like, you know where you get 'em in two, they're only getting half the pack. Wow. Yeah. Not enough. So they they come up with this plan via the printing press that they're going to

become forges basically and start printing. Using it to not just print leaflets, but cash.

Yes. And so they go and recruit this what's his face, geezer, who's someone's dad, wasn't

Cris: No, it was his brother in law.

Sidey: That's right, his brother in law, who,

Cris: don't know, the moustache man, I can't remember his name. Max? Max?

Sidey: he's kind of like an incredibly skilled forger and so you, you kind of see how it would work.

They wear something, you know, they do the screen printing of it, and then they, you know, engrave it into plates, and then they are.

Dan: they got a

Sidey: much fucking carbon copies of dollars they do at

first, isn't

Cris: The

Sidey: And they, the only problem with them is they look fucking brand new. So could they take one to the bank and say, how can you change this for francs?

And the woman's like, fuck it, this isn't you. And

Cris: we're on a honeymoon.

Sidey: you know, they give it some spiel and she gets taken in by the story and cashes it out. And they're like, fuck it works. So, they just start putting all this fake cash out into the system. And then they go from cash where the real success is, is from traveler's

Cris: Yes. Well, and that's where he goes to prison first because he gets done for the cash. Yeah. Meanwhile, he has this great plan. He ends up, it is, it's, it's not necessarily very much action, but in, within this kind of bit, he ends up meeting Fidel Castro and, and he wants to destabilize the, the American system and the American banks, which he sees as.

The

Sidey: That's the big prize, isn't it?

It's Citibank that he goes after

Dan: after.

Where did he meet him? On a roof?

Cris: know in an, in a toilet at the airport in Paris.

Sidey: in Paris.

Cris: because Castro was going to Russia via, and he was on his way to via Paris. And he, he tries to say to him, we're going to make all these fake dollars. If we inundate the market with fake dollars, we're going to destabilize the Americans.

And Castro says, you can't kill a bear with an ant.

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: And that's his, and he takes the 100 bill, Castro. He actually takes it. And,

Sidey: it in his pocket

Cris: and

Dan: those little army ants though, haven't you?

Cris: yeah. And then he gets, he gets arrested and they find, they actually find the, the dollar bills on him and he gets he goes to prison. Meanwhile, everyone else is released on bail and then he spends a little bit of time in prison.

Sidey: yeah, not long

Cris: Not, not a lot, but then he goes out again and then he starts working and someone gives him the, instead of payment as in cash, he gets traveler's checks. And he's like, the guy tells him these are as good as cash. You can check

Sidey: him in and cash him

Cris: them and you can spend them at the shop or you can go to the bank and cash them.

Dan: So his little mind is going over. He

Cris: started going, but he's clever when he goes to the supermarket to pay, he has. 10 francs or something, and the chopping is 20 and he's got that travelers check, but he holds it so the cashier can see it. Not for him to say, can I actually pay with this for her to, to grab it? And she's like, oh, you can pay with this.

And she takes it and gives him a lot of money has changed. And then you can see the, the, the light bulb going in his

Dan: okay.

Sidey: so it's specifically city bank that he goes after and it's the the attention that's brought on But to, in Paris, via the Yanks saying you've got to fucking get this guy, it's like costing us a

Dan: he, once he chose dollars, he's got the Yanks on him. It makes you think if he'd have chose Swiss francs or he'd have chose,

Cris: Well, he wanted the biggest

Dan: or, or anything.

But yeah, okay, he's gone for it.

Why not?

And

Cris: the Americans end up sending one of their execs in Paris because what they did was they would fake one check with one serial number, but they would go to, because they have an anarchist group that he would send a hundred people to cash these travelers checks, but all of them at 12 o'clock.

So they can't check at the same time the, the, the same, the same

Dan: Very organized for anarchists, weren't

Sidey: It's yeah, it is a big network of people that they've got. And what's been happening is we've seen him as a bit of a like numpty at first, like he pisses himself. We've seen pissing off twice. He's when he meets Ann he's not particularly confident with women.

He's not it doesn't really know how to, you know, approach the conversation with her or like he's obviously into her but she hones in on that straight away and dances with him and shows him where to put his hands. So, and as the film progresses and he gets more and more successful in his criminal enterprise, it has an effect.

all starts to crumble as he becomes more into His the

Dan: The crime, and the,

Sidey: crime side of it, it has a, the cost of of his relationship

Cris: he's always at night and they have a daughter.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Ah, there you

Cris: So yeah, but this is another thing that when the American exec comes to Paris and the police officer, inspector Costello is like, this is the guy, this is the brain of this operation. He's a bricklayer. That carries brick in a wheelbarrow and the guy's like this guy we've been we've been watching this guy for a week We're just here watching a builder.

What are we doing? This guy can't be the brain. He's like trust me I know I've been on him and he's the head of the network and all that and then Slowly, they kind of zone in on him, he's always followed, he's always under surveillance. And then his missus gets the chance to go to Bolivia and she's, she's a nurse or a doctor or something like that.

Sidey: A nurse, I think.

Cris: Something like that. And she, she gets offered to go to Bolivia to start a new life and to make a difference for people. And everyone around him kind of starts going, this anarchy movement is all well and noble, but it won't help anyone if we all go to prison.

Sidey: Yeah. Well, he does eventually go back, doesn't he?

He's captured. He's just constantly under surveillance. Is it, is it when we flash forward to the airport

Cris: Yes, yeah, that's where he gets caught, at the

Sidey: at the airport. We've seen it at the very start when it went in slow motion and what happens is whilst, when they throw the dollars and all the counterfeit up in the air and it creates a bedlam for them to try and escape, they swap clothes and they see Anne and they try and stop her and they're like, fuck it that's not him.

And then someone sees him, he's at the phone, but he's got her coat on and like hat. And eventually they just he gets lifted outside the airport. And he he's, you know, in prison again and he's captured and he said, he says to her, I think on the phone call and he says, like, I'll make it right. And effectively, he's basically got them over a barrel because they still don't know how he's doing it.

Yeah. And so he he's able to broker like an unbelievable deal with them whereby

he, does

he give them the plates?

Cris: Well, no, initially, well,

Sidey: He just, he just like They

Cris: they set him up with a fake American agent to buy all the travelers checks for 1 million. But in the end, the guy's undercover. He ends up in prison. After all this plan that he has, he has this elaborate plan on Saturday midday, he was meant to go to Bolivia with his family.

He had the flight ticket in his pocket. He gets busted. The guy turns out to be an undercover policeman. And then he comes up with this plan that In order for him to give them back the, he basically makes a deal with the guy from Citibank to say, I'll give you all the travellers cheques in existence, I'll give you all the plates, I'll give you my word that nothing will ever happen and you'll never have this problem again I think is, is it?

800, 000 or 200, 000 200, 000

Dan: 200, 000

Cris: what the threat is, because before he did all the swap, he didn't trust entirely the undercover police guy, and he made people fly to Mexico City everywhere where there was an anarchist. He sent travelers checks.

and and the Citibank head people call the guy and said, now they're appearing in Mexico city, the, the fake one.

So soon enough, they're going to be all over the world. You need to contain this.

Dan: Right,

Yeah, so it

Sidey: The deal he's able to make is to effectively say, I'll just get them to stop doing it. If you don't let me out, it's just gonna,

Cris: Yeah, you need to drop the charges

Sidey: he's let out, he's let out and he's still got a load of fucking money which he's able to distribute around the house to the guys. It's absolutely mental.

Dan: gas. That's absolutely mental. He

Cris: up going to Bolivia.

Sidey: He goes to see her. It's it's left that they're separated but they're still good friends. She started a new life. Yeah. And he's gonna carry on his his sort of anarchy type things and trying to stay out of prison and then you're given some text at the end about some factoids about what actually happened in a still photo of him as a proper old man.

I think he died in

Cris: in 2020, maybe?

Sidey: that. Yeah, not so long ago. And they reckon he forged 20 million worth of traveller's and this was in, like, between, like, 1940 and 1980. So, like, it's a

Dan: He's going, he's going for a few years, yeah, yeah, okay. I've not heard of that, but, I mean, it does seem kind of obvious, doesn't it? To, to fake traveller's checks rather than going through the hassle of, of doing

Cris: in that time when, you know, there's no

Dan: Computer

Sidey: Yeah, you don't need ID, you don't need anything.

Dan: just on luck and trust and things, yeah.

Sidey: It's called A Man of Action, the movie. There's not a huge amount of

Cris: The action itself is not what you would associate with a Hollywood movie, let's say. I would say I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a great movie.

Sidey: Yeah, I think I'm I'm loathe to say it because it feels like we say it every week, but it's too long. It's too long. I mean, maybe that suffers because it's a foreign language movie.

And so maybe they feel longer, but it's

Cris: It was two hours, I think, though, no?

Sidey: hours. Both the movies are two hours. It's it did feel like it was over long, you know, visually, stylistically it's like satisfactory, you know? It's,

Cris: It's almost like a throwback though, in terms of the way it's filmed, the way the makeup is, the way it looks. Obviously it's filmed in the 40s, so the cars look, you know, like

Sidey: looks the part,

Cris: It looks quite cool, but it's also a throwback in the way it's filmed, because it looks like it would be a film made in the 80s,

Dan: Right, okay.

Cris: but with the throwback to the 40s, if that makes sense.

Dan: So

it was black and white done with a Roley film. No, no. Yeah, it's kind of a Robin Hood story then. So he's he's getting money. He's giving it out to these anarchists. Did it follow up on

Sidey: Not really, you don't get to meet a huge amount of the network of other people.

Really, it's it's trying to give you that Robin Hood vibe. The cost of what the personal cost of what he's trying to achieve compared to you know the wider scale sort of chaos that he inflicts on the banking but ultimately it's you know does he achieve that much probably like irritates a lot of banks but that's about

Cris: a lot of banks, but that's about it. So what, there was a lot of, what did that guy say? Because obviously it's a foreign language. But

Sidey: It's mean of you not to put the subtitles on.

Cris: no, I did put them on, but she wasn't really paying attention obviously to the whole thing. But at the end, when the police officer asks the, the executive from city bank, he's like, I can't believe that guy basically pulled your pants down.

He's like, we gave that guy a tip.

Sidey: Yeah. That's

Cris: all it is. The house always wins 200 grand to make him shut up and disappear. We just gave him a tip. Like he would give a waiter, you know, he just said, that guy, we just gave him a tip and he disappeared. That's all there is. He didn't win. The house always wins. So as a morale of the story, okay, he could give, still was still an anarchist and he wrote two books and he lived happily ever after.

But Citibank was still Citibank and they

Dan: The big boys keep on rolling

Cris: that much in

Dan: So the moral of this story is it doesn't really matter how much you you you fight against it.

They'll always win

Cris: Well, I don't know. It probably is, but, but it does say and I kind of stayed without a little bit because despite the fact that you, you seen all the struggle, he was only a man and he could do as much as he could in the end, he realizes that he needs to. Kind of look after himself because,

Dan: Who else is going to do it?

Sidey: it's decent though. I, I say it's worth, it's worth your time if you, if you're looking for something to excellent watch, you can catch it on Netflix,

Dan: If I want

Cris: it's on Netflix.

It's in Spanish, obviously subtitles. It's also quite funny because everyone, although the action, obviously most of it happens in Paris. It seems that everyone that's in the movie speaks Spanish rather than, they throw in a bit of French here and there, but it's mostly everyone speaks

Sidey: Juan Jose Ballester, the lady was decent as Lucio and Leo Prey.

She must have been Irish, was she? And she's very pretty

Cris: Yeah, she's a pretty, really pretty lady, yeah.

Sidey: So on that basis alone, strong recommend.

Dan: Strong recommend. Okay.