Two Men in Town/Deux Hommes dans la Ville is a surprisingly good drama from Jose Giovanni, whose own prison experiences were the basis of Jacques Becker's Le Trou. The same sense of working from first-hand knowledge is omnipresent in this drama about Alain Delon's paroled convict trying to start a new life with the help of prison educator Jean Gabin and almost making a go of it until Michel Bouquet's local flic goes all Inspector Javert on him and does everything in his power to engineer his return to crime. Despite some hairspray style slo-mo montages and some awkward construction in the middle, the film manages to make it's potentially clichéd story both involving and convincing, not least because of Giovanni's great sense of place and motion, with his fluid camera-work particularly striking.<br /><br />Gabin is more engaged by the material than usual at this stage in his career and Delon is surprisingly good, especially in his all too convincing final scene, while a young Gerard Depardieu turns up in a couple of scenes offering three generations of iconic Gallic cinematic losers in one film. The crusading tone of the last third is a tad heavy, but the ending - both ritually stylised and yet realistically performed - makes its point far better than the courtroom speeches.