Paris. While driving, Saroyan, a CEO of a company, accidentally hits and destroys the car of Antoine, a man who wanted to go to a vacation. Saroyan feigns to compensate this by offering Antoine a paid gig to drive a Cadillac from Naples to Bordeaux, but in reality, Saroyan is connected to the mob, and is smuggling heroin, diamonds and gold to France hidden in the car, and the naive Antoine is an ideal mule. Saroyan secretly trails him in another car. Antoine picks up a girl, Ursula, and they travel along the coast before she goes in a different way. At the border inspection, Antoine spots the police searching Saroyan's car. He realizes he was framed, and thus calls his friends at the police and has them arrest Saroyan and his gang. When crashing the Cadillac in a store, and finding a diamond in the car's horn, Antoine is himself arrested and sent in the same car with Saroyan.
The first out of four joint movies made by the director Gerard Oury and comedian Louis de Funes, “The Sucker” is a light, accessible comedy that works as a parody inversion of the “The French Connection”, following a naive man who is unaware he is a mule who smuggles heroin and diamonds in a car through the border, as well as a restructured forerunner to “Smokey and the Bandit”, since the driver is secretly trailed by the CEO in another car. “The Sucker” became a surprise success, becoming the 4th highest grossing French film in France of the 20th century by selling 12,000,000 tickets at the local box office, yet today it fares less and did not retain its popularity factor due to a routine execution of the interesting story. The most was achieved out of de Funes, here in an untypical role of the villain, CEO Saroyan, who already gains charm in the opening sequence: even though his car hit him, and Antoine's car collapsed in pieces as a consequence, Saroyan simply says: "It's not that bad, it's only a scratch!" A neat running gag has Antoine accidentally losing all the secret goods along the way—he sends his bent car bumper for a repair, but as the car mechanic starts melting it, all the gold flows out of it; during a chase, a shootout hits the Cadillac's rear, and its two holes "spray" all the heroin in the air; Antoine throws away the old accumulator into the sea, and as it falls, hidden diamonds fall out of it—and thus by the time he reaches the border, he is inadvertently cleared of all troubles, since the border police cannot find anything left in the Cadillac. A lot of gags fail or feel forced (for instance, one lame one just has the chubby Saroyan taking a shower with a bodybuilder, and thus stares at the latter who looks at his muscles in the mirror), whereas the movie needed more ingenuity, which is why the viewers welcome the ending, since the story overstretched itself beyond its prime by the time it reaches the finale. Oury and de Funes were in better shape in "The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob".
Grade:++
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