A Thousand Billion Dollars (1982)
A young journalist stumbles across something much more sinister than a simple suicide in the death of a politician - the death seems to be an assassination contrived by an American multinational company intent on taking over several French industries. The journalist's objective is to garner enough evidence to expose the American corporation for what it really is, before French companies start disappearing - and before any more corpses accumulate, including his own.
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A Masterpiece!
Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
This is just a minor comment but... I just want to say this movie is great. It contains a lot of economic strategies and shows that multinationals are more powerful then entire nations. It is still very actual nowadays, maybe even more today... Less and less multinationals still exist today with larger and larger corporations controlling the world. However what I'd like to stress here in this quote is; GTI is ITT. The company in the movie, called GTI is in fact ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph). I'd like to refer to the book "The Sovereign State of I.T.T.". Most scenes of the movies are literally taken from the book. Of course they didn't include it into the movie's credits, it would come under fire. If you compare them, then it should be clear. Just my two cents.
Not quite what you would expect from someone like Henri Verneuil. Patrick Dewaere does indeed rescue the film from complete oblivion. While Robert Lattes' novel makes pleasant reading (if you read French, that is), the movie adaptation doesn't amount to much. Denouncing the ills of "big business" is certainly laudable, as is placing the action if the larger picture of "economic history". But is this sufficient to keep an audience spellbound from beginning to end? All the ingredients are there for the taking. But Verneuil never seems to be willing to go all the way, and he simply leaves you high and dry. Enrolling a better- than-average cast of actors is no guaranteed recipe for success. If all you're looking for is just to sit back and relax because you've nothing better to do than watch a movie, OK -- go ahead. But if you're looking for a good French movie, skip this one. A sheer waste of time. (But read the book by all means).
Capitalism, liberalism, profits, benefits, money, power ... how far can this vision of life can lead to ? This movie deals with a story that could easily be classified as 'usual' today ; a journalist tries to find the truth about a big holding shady business and discover tremendous things that make his life in danger.Beyond that cliché of cinema, "Mille Milliards de dollars" points at the world we're living in, where money and power rule, where people thinks to be free but are actually pawns moved by interests and to make always more and more benefits, where the stakes are so huge there are no law anymore, no human beings, just customers, workers, business, profit: The real power is not in politic but in money !Made about 20 years ago and still so actual...a great movie !