It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

"The Judge And The Assassin" is a technically well-crafted film, with top-notch performances by Philippe Noiret and Michel Galabru (as well as by a young Isabelle Huppert in a small early role). It's also a wrongheaded film that tries to force a sense of moral complexity on the viewer. The attempts to create sympathy for the human monster played by Galabru are misguided at best, there is a gratuitous rape scene for shock value only, and the final blow is delivered at the very end, when we are informed that, although Galabru's serial killer had brutally raped and disemboweled 12 children, during the same period thousands of kids had perished while working in the mines. So? Is that supposed to make his crimes less horrific? I am reminded, once again, of Pauline Kael's comment on Tavernier's later, and more famous, "Coup De Torchon": "he's saying horrible, senseless, inexplicable things, such as that killing on a small scale is less immoral than killing on a grand scale". ** out of 4.

The judge and the assassin is a strange and ironic title for this film. It does not represent what your mind immediately leads you to believe. It is about the arrest and trial of a psychopath, alas French auteur style. It bears in odd-about way a resemblance to Lacombe Lucien which was released two years earlier. Featuring a bravura performance by Michel Galabru ( he worn the Cesar, the French Oscar) as the serial killer, his trial becomes a study into the mind and evil of nation at the turn of the last century. Dealing with anti-semitism, civil unrest, disobedience and the tyranny of the France and the Church can make anyone crazy and an assassin. With strong performances by Tavernier favorite actor Philippe Noiret and a young Isabelle Huppert, it is a fine film in the tradition of French cinema prior to the advent of the New Wave.

Michel Galabru got the highest french award for his role in this movie, the "Cesar du meilleur acteur". Galabru became then one of the greatest actor in France.Either in comedy or in tragedy (see "Le gendarme" and "L'été meurtrier".

A French provincial town in the late 1890's where a Judge attempts to advance his political power by trying to prove that a soldier was not insane at the time of committing murder, which means soilder gets the guillotine and not the mad house. A movie that is more about the social turmoil in France.