Film Review: Point Blank (2010)

The one and only reason Hollywood buys up the remake rights to foreign films such as L'appartement, The Departed, Cell 211, Lake Mungo and this one is that they all have rock solid scripts. These are films that start with clever, original concepts and carry through with polished, smart scriptwriting. Hollywood is, in effect, buying the blueprints for success. This begs the eternal question of why filmmakers outside the U.S. seem to be so much better at coming up with original ideas for films. The answer is money.

In lieu of creativity Hollywood has money. A film such as Cowboys & Aliens uses pricey stars, expensive sfx, and wall-to-wall advertising to put bums in seats. And all that money couldn't buy a concept that was as good as most old Star Trek episodes. It's as though the studio was trying to bribe the audience to come to the cinema. Elsewhere, however, filmmakers can't sell sizzle, they have to sell steak. That means coming up with a concept and script that's so compelling it stands out from the background noise of the Hollywood hype machine. A Spanish or French filmmaker can't go to local production company with a weak idea and say that the final film will succeed if only they fork over north of $100m on stars and marketing. It's not going to happen. They need a concept that works no matter how low the budget.

And this brings me to Point Blank, a nearly flawless French thriller that wastes not a second of screen time. Without going spoiler-crazy I'll just say that it's about a hospital orderly played by Gilles Lellouche (previously seen in Chamber of Death) who is forced to remove an injured criminal from the hospital he works in. Things go badly wrong, of course, and the balance of the film's lean 84-minute running time is spent in chases, fights, hairbreadth escapes and the unraveling of a conspiracy and a coverup. In other words, everything you want in a thriller, only without big stars, over-the-top (and expensive) action sequences, and a saturation ad campaign that gives away all the best bits.

Gilles Lellouche is excellent as the orderly who finds himself running for his life. The script doesn't have him be unbelievably resourceful or tough, just desperate and determined. Roschdy Zem, France's go-to tough guy actor, plays the injured and hunted criminal and he brings a lot of presence to the role. The only problem I have with the film is the title. Why confuse your film with a 1960s classic? That's the only unoriginal idea in the whole film.

Film Review: Chamber of Death (2007)

Melanie Laurent

Oh, those arrogant, nervy French! Not only do they make a knock-off of The Silence of the Lambs, but they have the audacity to have one of the characters pull the Thomas Harris book from a shelf and give it a meaningful look.  And then, to top it all off, they actually have the gall to make a better film.

Like The Silence of the Lambs, Chamber of Death is about a killer with a very pervy hobby, but it's also about a kidnapping scheme that goes horribly awry, a dark secret from the past, a petty crime that escalates into murder, and a love affair. In short, this film offers triple the plot of Silence, plus all the requisite tension, horror and drama.

Melanie Laurent,  most well known for Inglorious Basterds, stars as Lucie, a detective and single mother of infant twins who's just recently joined the Dunkirk police. A young girl is found murdered and Lucie and her partner Pierre (Eric Caravaca) take the lead in the investigation. The girl appears to have been killed in a ritual manner, but the detectives soon find out that she was kidnapped for ransom. What they don't know is that the ransom payment was botched when two men on a late night drunken joyride struck and killed the girl's father, who was carrying two million Euros to a drop-off. The two men have the loot, but soon have a falling out. Another girl is kidnapped and Lucie and Pierre are racing against the clock to find her.

I won't try to describe all the twist and turns the plot takes, but the dense, twisty nature of the story is one of this film's main pleasures. The director, Alfred Lot, does an amazing job of juggling multiple storylines, and in the middle of this complicated cat-and-mouse thriller he manages to shoehorn in a sweet and believable romance between Lucie and Pierre.  He also takes time to give some personality to even the most minor of characters.

The acting is uniformly excellent. Laurent is both appealing and believably tough.  She's a bit like a French Sandra Bullock. Special mention goes to Gilles Lellouche who plays one of the men who steal the ransom money. His role is that of a decent man whose life takes one terrible turn, and Lellouche does an excellent job showing his horror and desperation. Lellouche is currently starring in Point Blank (my review here), which is an absolutely kick-ass thriller.

A lot of the credit for Chamber of Death has to go to Franck Thilliez, the co-scriptwriter and author of the novel the script is based on. Thilliez has written more than a few crime novels, but none of them, it seems, have been translated into English. If you go looking for this film take note that it's sometimes titled Melody's Smile. The trailer for the film that I've posted below is, unfortunately, in French only.