Pulling the Stops

By JAY COCKS

A PAIN IN THE A - Directed by EDOUARD MOLINARO Screenplay by FRANCIS VEBER

The aggravation! You just would not believe it. Which is all right too, because no one is meant to.

The excellent Lino Ventura appears as your ordinary, tough, proficient hit man for hire. His job, this time out, is to shoot down a witness who threatens to "blow the lid off" a rather sensitive government scandal. The exact nature of the disgrace is unspecified, but there is no mistaking Ventura's dedication. He rents a hotel room in the French town of Montpellier and starts unpacking his sniper gear from a specially rigged suit case lined with foam rubber.

Now just next door is Jacques Brel, a shirt salesman whose wife has run off with her psychiatrist. Woebegone even at the best of times, the salesman is having one of his worse days. He decides to commit suicide. Of course, he bungles the job. He bungles everything. His suicidal impulses impinge on Ventura's concentration, eventually even threaten his mission.

Before long -and A Pain in the A - is nothing if not brisk -Ventura is forced to take Brel under his wing, approximately the place where his rifle butt ought to be.

If Brel succeeds in killing himself, then the death will have to be reported to the police, company that Ventura can easily do without. Ventura makes an attempt to do Brel's job for him -out in the country with a single, simple pistol shot -but is totally undone by events, which include having to drive a hysterical pregnant woman to a clinic.

Confusion is redoubled, then compounded, a state of affairs usual for farce of this order but a rather hectic substitute for true fun. What is most enjoyable in A Pain in the A - is the face of Ventura, racked like an oak stump, as he suffers the slings of wholly outrageous fortune.

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