NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (August 2026): Kino have transferred Robin Davis's Le Choc to Blu-ray. This was on DVD as part of Lionsgate's 2008 Catherine Deneuve Collection - that we reviewed HERE. Pierre-William Glenn’s (Serie Noire, Avalanche, Boomerang, Small Change, The Judge and the Assassin, The Clockmaker, Day for Night, Out 1) cinematography is competent and colorful, contrasting city and Brittany countryside. The 1080P transfer delivers a solid, film-like HD image with natural grain, stable contrast, and the colorful urban/rural palette that defines the movie - Parisian interiors and streets versus the brighter Brittany coastal and farm sequences. Glenn’s competent, polished lighting and framing benefits from the increased resolution over the previous compared DVD particularly in close-ups of Delon and Deneuve and the action set pieces. As with many Kino Studio Classics-style releases of this era, expect a clean, attractive presentation. No strong complaints.

NOTE: We have added 78 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE.

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original French language. This preserves Philippe Sarde’s (The Tenant, Lancelot Du Lac, The Widow Courderc, The Clockmaker of St. Paul, Madame Rosa, The Tenant, Max and the Junkman, Tess, La Grande Bouffe, Quest For Fire,) distinctive score - its jazz-rock rhythms, Wayne Shorter’s soprano saxophone, and orchestral romantic cues - with good clarity and dynamic range for a stereo track of the period. Dialogue remains intelligible and well-balanced against the music and effects (gunfire, vehicles, rural ambience). The lossless encoding should eliminate the compression artifacts common to older lossy presentations, allowing Sarde’s energetic and atmospheric work to come through cleanly. Director Robin Davis later praised Sarde’s contribution, saying the music “told a story alongside mine” and helped bring the film closer to what it might have been. Sound design (Michel Desrois) is straightforward and effective for the dialogue-driven scenes and bursts of violence, without drawing particular attention to itself.  Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A'-locked Blu-ray.

The extras on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray are headlined by a new audio commentary track featuring entertainment journalists Bryan Reesman and Talia Soghomonian. The pair, experienced with genre and star-driven titles, can be expected to cover the film’s production difficulties, the Delon–Deneuve pairing, its loose adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel, Davis’s direction, and the movie’s place in 1980s French policier cinema. Also included are a theatrical trailer for Le Choc and five other titles in the Kino catalog: Vice and Virtue, Un Flic, Hustle, Joy House, and The Widow Couderc.

Robin Davis's Le Choc is a French policier/thriller that pairs Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve in an adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s 1981 neo-polar novel La Position du tireur couché (The Prone Gunman). It stands as a revealing case study in star power overriding source material, production tensions shaping the final product, and the limitations of early-1980s French commercial genre filmmaking. Robin Davis, coming off the commercial success of La Guerre des polices (1979), was approached by producers Alain Sarde and Alain Terzian with the prospect of a Delon vehicle. Davis initially resisted further polars but was intrigued by the idea of pairing Delon with Deneuve (their second narrative film together after Melville’s Un flic). He discovered Manchette’s novel and drafted an adaptation closer to its spirit: a depressed, misogynistic, hard-drinking hitman living in a cellar, eating cold spaghetti, far from glamorous. Delon’s image as a mythic, controlled loner made that impossible - “A myth does not eat cold spaghetti in a cellar,” as Davis later recalled. The script was rewritten (with Delon, Dominique Robelet, and Claude Veillot) into a more conventional heroic narrative of the killer who wants to hang up his gun. Delon (Rocco and His Brothers, Purple Noon, L'Eclisse, The Leopard, Joy House, Is Paris Burning?, Le Samouraï, Diabolically Yours, Spirits of the Dead, The Girl on a Motorcycle, Farewell, Friend, The Swimming Pool, The Sicilian Clan, Borsalino, The Red Circle, The Widow Couderc, Un Flic, A Cop, Shock Treatment, Icy Breasts, The Burned Barns, Scorpio, Mr. Klein, Le gang,) nearing 50, delivers the expected controlled intensity and physical presence (including a somewhat gratuitous shower scene). Critics at the time and since have noted that he is essentially “doing Delon” - summarizing the persona rather than fully inhabiting a character, as Serge Daney acidly observed. Deneuve (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Repulsion, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Belle de jour, Mississippi Mermaid, Tristana, Donkey Skin, A Cop, Le sauvage, Hustle, The Last Metro, Manon 70, 8 Woman, Le choc, The Convent, Belle Toujours The Hunger, Pola X, A Christmas Tale, Marcel Proust's Time Regained, Dancer in the Dark) is elegant but underused and somewhat miscast as the unhappy turkey farmer who becomes the romantic interest; her screen time is limited in the early and late sections, and the chemistry with Delon is more star glamour than deep connection. Supporting players (François Perrot - Coup De Torchon - as the organization boss Cox, Philippe Léotard - Day of the Jackal, Étienne Chicot - Fill 'er Up with Super, a brief Stéphane Audran - Le Boucher, Wedding in Blood, Babette's Feast, The Third Lover, The Unfaithful Wife, Just Before Nightfall, Betty, Coup De Torchon, Cop Au Vin, La Rupture, Chicken With Vinegar, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Line of Demarcation, The Champagne Murders, Blue Panther, Bluebeard,) provide solid genre texture. Le Choc illustrates the tension between literary neo-polar rigor and commercial star vehicle demands. Davis himself later judged that he could have made a strong film noir and instead produced an ego-flattering action picture. As an adaptation it demonstrates how thoroughly a source text can be reshaped by the gravitational pull of a star’s image. As a film it remains an efficient, starry, ultimately hollow example of its period’s mainstream French thriller. Kino’s Le Choc Blu-ray is a welcome, no-frills high-definition debut for a solid if uneven star vehicle. The dual-layer disc, lossless stereo track, and new commentary provide a respectable foundation for fans of Delon, Deneuve, or 1980s French thrillers. Recommended for collectors of the stars or the genre.

Gary Tooze