Tchéky Karyo Movies
Memorable to fans of international cinema as the spy recruiter who schooled Nikita in the fine art of assassination, international actor Tchéky Karyo has been racking up memorable screen credits for over 20 years. Whether a fan of mainstream American action movies or obscure foreign arthouse fare, many viewers have likely seen the versatile Karyo and likely remember the characters he portrayed.Born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1953 and raised in Paris, Karyo studied drama at the Cyrano Theater before moving on to essay numerous classical stage roles at the Daniel Sorano Company. Upon joining the National Theater of Strasbourg, Karyo refined his versatility by alternating between contemporary fare and such classical Shakespearian works as Macbeth and Othello. Soon becoming one of France's most popular actors, Karyo, with over 50 film and television credits to his name, found that his popularity wasn't limited by international borders through roles in such films as The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), The Bear (1988), and director Luc Besson's influential La Femme Nikita (1990). Fans of historical film may recognize Karyo from his roles as Vincent Van Gogh (Vincent and Me) and famed prophet Nostradamus (Nostradamus) in addition to roles in such historical films as 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and The Patriot (2000).
Becoming a familiar face to American filmgoers in the 1990s, Karyo could play everything from low-key and comically philosophical (Addicted to Love [1997]) to an over-the-top bad guy (Bad Boys [1995]) to a Russian defense minister (GoldenEye [1995]) with equal conviction no matter how large, small, or varied the role might be. After an audacious turn as a loose-hinged policeman in the hyperkinetically tasteless Dobermann (1997), Karyo appeared frequently in such English-language films as Wing Commander (1999), The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999, re-teaming the actor with Nikita helmer Besson), Saving Grace (2000), and Kiss of the Dragon (2001). In addition to his nomination for a César for his role in La Balance (1982), Karyo was the recipient of the Jean Gabin Prize in recognition of his talent in 1986. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 1992
Sketch Artist is a made-for-cable thriller about a police sketch artist (Jeff Fahey) whose latest witness (Drew Barrymore) describes a suspect that looks exactly like his wife (Sean Young). Instead of revealing this information to the police, he suppresses the sketch while he does his own investigation. However, the police soon suspect that the artist himself might be involved in the murder. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jeff Fahey, Sean Young, (more)
- 1992
- PG13
This, the second of 1992's 500th anniversary Christopher Columbus films (the first being Warner Bros. Christopher Columbus: The Discovery), adheres to the historical facts of Columbus's (Gerard Depardieu) possessed quest to discover the New World, and his solicitation of Queen Isabella (Sigourney Weaver) to gain the necessary funding. Despite travelogue-quality footage replete with beautiful scenery of Caribbean islands and a massive cast, this film tends to plod along with too predictable a plot and a mis-cast Columbus. Depardieu -- a very capable French actor speaking English and playing an Italian -- becomes perhaps the movie's bright spot (even if at his own expense) as he laughably struggles with line after line. Michael Wincott puts forth a worthy performance as a nasty Spanish nobleman whose mistreatment of the natives results in an open rebellion. ~ Rovi
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Armand Assante, (more)
- 1992
In this earnest drama, a rural schoolteacher who has become a strong advocate for ecological awareness and is a committed opponent of hunting in the local swamp becomes romantically embroiled with a single mother who has returned to her birthplace since just before her boy (now nine years old) was born. Despite some hard feelings from the adult population of the town (who are very pro-hunting), the teacher's romance progresses smoothly until he learns that his girlfriend's brother stuffs and mounts specimens of endangered species. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tchéky Karyo, Dominique Blanc, (more)
- 1991
- R
A normally gentle photojournalist becomes a raging vigilante down in Rio following the death of the gentle prostitute he had befriended. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Peter Coyote, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
- 1991
- R
Based on the Alberto Moravia novel, Husbands and Lovers examines a modern couple's untraditional open marriage. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
- Starring:
- Julian Sands, Joanna Pacula, (more)
- 1990
Isabelle Eberhardt dramatizes the tragic true story of the iconoclastic Swiss-born writer, who gained notoriety for both her lifestyle and her work in North Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. Eberhardt (Mathilda May) began dressing as a man and converted to Islam in her teens. As the film opens, she returns from the African desert to tend to her ailing father in Geneva. After his death, the wife of the Marquis de Mores summons her to Paris. The Marquis has gone missing in North Africa, because of Eberhardt's familiarity with the region, his wife pays her to go and track her husband down. Eberhardt settles in Algiers, where, hindered by the French authorities, she quickly gives up the search for de Mores, assuming that he's dead. She stays in North Africa, journeys frequently into the desert, and writes about her experiences for publisher Victor Barrucand (Claude Villers). The hard drinking Eberhardt meets Slimene (Tcheky Karyo of The Patriot), a Foreign Legion soldier, and falls in love with him. Through him, she makes contact with the secretive Sufi brotherhood of Qadriya. As she witnesses the abuses of the French colonists, her writings grow more political in nature and she starts to get more attention. One French military officer, Comte (Richard Moire) imprisons and abuses her. When an Arab swordsman viciously attacks her, Eberhardt holds Comte responsible. He eventually arranges for her deportation. But the resilient Eberhardt returns to North Africa, against Slimene's wishes. There, another French officer, Major Lyautey (Peter O'Toole) befriends her. He seems a decent man, but when he asks her to report to him on Arab groups hostile to the French, she wrestles with her conscience. Australian director Ian Pringle would later go on to produce Romper Stomper, starring Russell Crowe. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mathilda May, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
- 1990
A young woman's real talent gets her mixed up with crooks selling fake art treasures in this comedy for the whole family. Jo (Nina Petronzio) is a 13-year-old girl who loves to draw and has a very special talent -- she can sketch and paint in a style that bears a startling resemblance to the work of Vincent Van Gogh. Jo's talent has won her a grant to art school, but she also discovers it can earn her pocket money when a man in a coffee shop sees her sketching and offers to pay her to do some drawings for him. Jo agrees, but regrets her decision when she discovers she's unwittingly become part of an art counterfeiting ring -- her drawings are being as sold as Van Gogh originals, with customers lining up to pay the multimillion-dollar price tags! Vincent and Me also features Christopher Forrest, Paul Klerk, and Tcheky Karyo as the ghost of Vincent Van Gogh. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nina Petronzio, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
The serpentine plotline of Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita begins its 117-minute slither when punkish, psychotic, and drug-ridden Nikita (Anne Parillaud) fires her gun into a cop's face following the stick-up of a drug store, and is promptly imprisoned. She is thrown into a dank cell, then injected with a substance and told it is a lethal toxin. Instead of dying, however, the comes to in an all-white interrogation room, where French intelligence officer Bob (Tchéky Karyo), informs her that an alternate to execution exists: she can receive covert government training as an assassin. She accepts the bid, is rigorously trained, and later returns to society as a seemingly normal and gentle civilian, but falls in love with a drugstore employee while she's waiting for that first government assignment. The paradoxical concept of a young woman blossoming socially while carrying out cold-blooded murders was downplayed when La Femme Nikita was remade in America as the silly and disappointing Point of No Return, directed by John Badham with Bridget Fonda in the lead. A far less sociopathic TV-series version of La Femme Nikita surfaced on the USA cable network in early 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, (more)
- 1989
Widower Edouard Pierson (Jeremy Irons) fought for Australia in World War Two, but he was born (and married) in Belgium. For the past twelve years, he has been living in Australia with his daughter. His occupation as a wool merchant is in keeping with his family's tradition. He is determined to remain in Australia, and is equally determined to keep his daughter (Danielle Lyttleton) from learning much about her mother, whom she never knew. Nonetheless, when his brother (Tcheky Karyo) calls urgently from Belgium, requesting his help in saving the family's business there, he returns to his hometown of Verviers. In addition to saving the family business, he comes to have second thoughts about returning to Australia after he has a brief affair with a Belgian woman (Fanny Ardant). Meanwhile, his daughter has made contact with her grandmother (Helene Surgere), and is beginning to learn about her mother. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Fanny Ardant, Jeremy Irons, (more)
- 1989
An art restorer and (of neccessity) a bit of a historian, Eric (Tcheky Karyo) has been asked to come to a very spooky mansion to restore what looks to be a painting by a hideously deformed, mentally deranged artist who is only now becoming popular, years after his death. As he restores the painting, he begins to have strange flashbacks, as if he were the painter himself. Meanwhile, he is developing a relationship with the painting's lovely owner (Laura Morante). The painting is a picture of the girl's grandmother, and as the restoration progresses, both he and the girl begin to reenact the stormy relationship between the painter and his subject, as if they were possessed. One interesting feature of this film is that the dialogue alternates between Spanish and French. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Laura Morante, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
Jean-Jacques Annaud directed this unusual and compelling tale of animals in the wild, which tells its tale from the bears' point of view. A pair of carefully-trained bruins deliver remarkably effective "performances" (aided by clever editing and, in some sequences, the use of realistic animated models). A infant bear cub (Douce the Bear) witnesses the death of his mother in a rockslide and is forced to set out to fend for himself. The young bear encounters a giant grizzly (Bart the Bear), who at first cannot abide the young bear's presence. However, the grizzly is soon ambushed by a pair of hunters -- Bill (Jack Wallace) and Tom (Tcheky Karyo) -- after an altercation with their pack animals. As the injured beast cleans his wounds in a stream, the young bear comes to his aid, and the giant takes the youngster under his wing. However, Bill and Tom have sworn revenge on the grizzly, and when they capture the young bear, it lures the giant back into the hunters' camp. L'Ours, released in English-speaking countries as The Bear, was based on the novel King Grizzly by James Oliver Curwood. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Douce the Bear, Bart the Bear, (more)
- 1987
Jerome (Richard Berry) is the manager of a photography lab who gets involved with the mysterious Simorre (Claire Nebout) in this suspenseful drama. Invited to her yacht in the South of France, Jerome meets the strange entourage that always accompanies Simorre. The trio consists of a former sculptor, Simorre's oily ex-husband, and a homosexual architect. The film contains symbolic touches reminiscent of Hitchcock, but Jerome never feels terror nor experiences any impending danger. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Richard Berry, Claire Nebout, (more)
- 1987
Sorceress is not a remake of the 1982 erotic thriller of the same name. This 1987 film is set in medieval France, where, in certain quarters, witchcraft is accepted as a fact of life and an everyday occurrence. A travelling priest visits town after town, hoping to root out those still practicing pagan rituals in defiance of church edicts. Visually, the film is a stunner; in terms of content, there's more atmosphere than story, which is not an altogether bad thing. Try to see the subtitled version of Sorceress; the English-dubbed version is about as credible as a Godzilla movie. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tchéky Karyo, Christine Boisson, (more)
- 1986
If the hunt that lends dramatic action to this fast-paced story could be notched up into a more harrowing adventure, then the fates of escaped thief Ned (Lambert Wilson) and Lilly (Myriem Roussel) the wife of his pursuer, would engage viewers' attention all the more. The half-psychotic cop Franck (Tcheky Karyo) captures Ned during a robbery but instead of taking him directly to the station, he handcuffs him to a pipe in his bathroom at home. Meanwhile, Franck's wife Lilly is in the process of dumping him for good and after an argument, Franck gets knocked unconscious. Lilly and a friend uncuff Ned, and the three take off. Franck is after them big-time, and sure enough, the hunted make a few unforgivable errors that only help the demented cop in his search. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lambert Wilson, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
- 1986
This routine drama's main distinctions are the musical numbers by Julia Migenes Johnson as a misbehaving singer and the computer-assisted scenes that are melded with actual scenes for the first time in French cinema. The singer has been missing her scheduled performances -- or just simply cuts out half-way through a concert. Since her producer cannot reform her, he funds a computer scientist to come up with a believable hologram that will perform in her place -- and none will be the wiser. Once the hologram is created and up and running, the singer's former lover gets suspicious, and the plot thickens. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tchéky Karyo, Sami Frey, (more)
- 1986
In this political drama, five left-leaning friends gradually lose heart in the Socialist government elected in 1981 in France. One of the five men is a television broadcaster; the others are a teacher about to become an academic inspector, a tax man, the director of a cultural center, and a sociologist who is about to step into a ministerial position. Their interlocking lives are told in alternating vignettes over a four-year period, and the professions director Jacques Fansten has chosen for his main characters seem to be a comment on the media, education, budget or finance, the arts, and government bureaucracy under Socialist rule. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robin Renucci, Jean-Pierre Bacri, (more)
- 1985
Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and intended as "a homage to the great writer," this film is set in modern France rather than 19th century Russia. This is a story of Léon (Francis Huster), who has been recently released from a mental asylum and claims to be a descendant of a Hungarian prince. On his way from Hungary to France, he meets Mickey (Tchéky Karyo), a hood who has committed a successful bank robbery and plans to take brutal revenge on the brothers Venin for what they did to his girlfriend Mary (Sophie Marceau). Léon can hardly understand what Mickey is up to but he follows him everywhere and soon falls in love with Mary. This odd love triangle resolves in a tragic ending. The frantic pace of the film's action can be compared to that of a runaway, hell-bound train. The colors and sounds go out of control, and violence abounds -- all of which is intended to convey to a viewer the craziness of the time. ~ Yuri German, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sophie Marceau, Francis Huster, (more)
A young woman looks for the true meaning of love and learns the truth of the old saw, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone," in this fourth installment in Eric Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs series. The story opens with the proverb, "He who has two women loses his soul. He who has two houses loses his mind," and centers on Louise (Pascale Ogier) and her live-in lover, Remi (Tchéky Karyo), a Paris architect and noted tennis player. Their relationship hits an important juncture when Remi decides he wants to get married, while Louise wants to continue living the life of a party girl. Eventually, Louise decides to escape her lover's oppression and become intimate with loneliness, so she moves to Paris where she makes complex plans to have her cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, things don't go exactly as planned as she finds herself the object of an amiable writer's affections. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- Pascale Ogier, Fabrice Luchini, (more)
- 1984
Ostensibly about the sudden disappearance of a businessman and the subsequent behavior of his wife Elena (Helen Surgere), his son Robert (Tcheky Karyo), and his accountant (Jean Bouise), this allegorical film is really a weighty statement on the nature of Swiss society. After her husband has disappeared, Elena takes over his business, but instead of nurturing it along she does just the opposite: she trashes it, step by step. Meanwhile, Robert asks Alice (Laura Morante), perhaps his father's lover, to help him look for his father and ends up losing his job with a Zurich orchestra because he can no longer cope. The accountant, in turn, is overwhelmed by the mother's actions, the disappearance of the father, and the son's emotional and psychological collapse. If director (Alain Klarer) is saying that there are serious problems at all levels of Swiss society, he is saying it too slowly, too didactically, and too abstrusely to entertain an average audience. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Hélène Surgère, Tchéky Karyo, (more)
- 1983
In another typical Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle, the French action hero plays a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord (Henry Silva) who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal. Stunts (performed by Belmondo) and chase scenes on land and water enliven the story, but the scenes with Belmondo's love interest are rather marginal themselves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Henry Silva, (more)
- 1983
In this polemical look at a revolutionary released from prison and bent on getting back at the right-wing conservatives who got him into prison in the first place, director Romain Goupil uses a heavier hand than in his earlier, well-received film, Mourir a 30 Ans. There is a certain amount of stereotyping in the way the fascists and leftists look and act, something that may have worked against the director's portrayal of fascists in the police force, or idealized revolutionaries. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tchéky Karyo, France Camus, (more)
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