Comme un Boomerang (1976)
José Giovanni (real name: Jacques Damiani) is one of the more interesting but also very dubious French filmmakers of the post-World War II era.
He spent eleven and a half years in prison, among other things for collaboration with the Germans and complicity in a triple murder.
He started writing crime novels such as Le Trou in the mid-1950s, which were not only successful but were also turned into films. Soon Giovanni also started writing screenplays and in time he started directing as well. Although he hardly ever referred to his wartime past, many of his films can be seen as disguised attempts to come to terms with himself and his past.
A prime example being Comme un Boomerang, for which he collaborated with Alain Delon in his seventies workaholic period.
Delon plays wealthy industrialist Jacques Batkin whose criminal past comes back to haunt him as the proverbial Boomerang when his son Eddy (Louis Julien) accidentally shoots and kills a police officer while under the influence of drugs.
A heavy prison sentence or even the death penalty lies ahead for the teenager, pushing Dad to the limit - and beyond.
Giovanni manages to stretch this simple fact into a 100 minutes feature film. It helps that this is one of those roles that fits Delon like a glove, with a face that almost permanently speaks doom and gloom.
Jacques’ family life, his work, the relationship with his wife Muriel (Caria Gravina) and the elderly lawyer (Charles Vanel ) who has assisted him in the past and who now - together with a younger colleague - has to defend his son, these are all elements that Giovanni skillfully uses to captivate the viewer. As long as you can accept that Jacques is increasingly portrayed as a tragic hero and Eddy as the real victim.
With Comme un Boomerang, José Giovanni convincingly shows how far a troubled father will go to save his son from a tragic fate.