An early work from director Luc Besson, Subway is a dark and highly stylised picture which concerns an enigmatic safecracker (Christopher Lambert) hiding out in the Paris Metro system. While living in the underground and eluding both gangsters and Metro police he meets up with a group of colourful and quirky subterranean inhabitants eager to help him and start a rock band. All the while the safecracker blackmails a rich woman (Isabelle Adjani) with whom he is in love. Meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on urban life, the film works better as a light freewheeling entertainment, with well-constructed fast-paced action sequences and a breezy sense of humour about itself. Subway is an intriguing diversion and a chance to see the cutting-edge of contemporary French moviemaking. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
when movies were fun Remember the days when movies were fun to watch and once you saw them you would never forget it? this is that type of movie. one of Besson's best movies along with The Big Blue, Leon and Nikita. after these four great movies he went downhill...or he just took a long dive like one of the divers in the big blue.
The Style's Supposed to outweigh the Substance! From it's opening car chase (with it`s loud soft rock soundtrack and brightly sunlit look it could have been shot by Tony Scott), it's fairly clear that Luc Besson's quintessentially '80's Cinema du Look classic is going to be a film about style. And from there on, daylight's hardly seen again at all as we enter a dark world of smoke and neon. A quirky, offbeat New Wave gem of a movie, Subway is intentionally plot- lite but extremely heavy on stunning imagery. British and American critics often entirely... more info
A flawed, though no less interesting experiment, in ultra-chic visual filmmaking. At the time, a huge box-office hit in its native France - and as a result of the rising popularity of lead actors Christopher Lambert and Isabelle Adjani, something of a cult film in the UK - Subway (1985) was seen as a companion piece to Jean Jacques Beineix's earlier art-house classic, Diva (1981). Together, these two films can be seen as both the development and the continuation of the concerns and preoccupations of the then-newly dubbed "cinema du look" movement; a brief cinematic resurgence in French... more info
Rise of Luc Besson Before Christopher Lambert's downfall into garish sci-fi flicks such as Highlander 2 & 3 and Mortal Kombat, he starred in some very good French films. 'Subway' is one of them. The film opens in the midst of a car chase, and from there, Fred, the protagonist, finds himself sifting through the underground maze of the Paris Metro (or the subway). During his escape from the authorities, he meets all sorts of colourful characters. Vagabonds and thieves who introduce him into the seedy underworld of... more info
![Subway [1985]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4152YT8PCVL._SL160_.jpg)
