I just finished watching The Crimson Rivers, a movie highly recommended by Roger Ebert. After viewing it, I have to say I don't know why it would be highly recommended by Ebert, unless he fell asleep after the first half-hour.
For those first thirty minutes, I was completely taken in. The film is set in the French Alps and its story begins with an improbable murder: a corpse is found on a glacial cliff, bound in a fetal position, eyes missing, with the hands amputated.
Jean Reno, a legendary cop, is sent from Paris to investigate. He discovers the corpse was once a professor at one of France's top universities, situated just below where the body was found. But the university staff is suspiciously uncooperative. What do they have to hide?
So far, so good. But then the second cop is introduced. I recognize the face of the actor, but not his name, which I had to look up: Vincent Cassel. Cassel's cop starts off as a fairly cool character. When we first see him, he is hanging out with some French Arabs as they do some sort of shuck and jive that I take to be a French version of Rap. A little later, he smokes a joint in a squad car with two of his flunkies.
But this initial coolness later evaporates as the Lieutenant seems to come unhinged at the most trivial of matters (for example, his car not starting, even though I can't understand why he would be in such a hurry; at the time, he's merely investigating the desecration of a girl's tomb).
So what begins as beautifully filmed macabre-thriller finishes with Cassel and Reno getting together (as their separate cases intersect) to trade what I take to be witticisms, as if the French were trying their best to imitate an American cop buddy movie like Lethal Weapon or a tame version of 48 Hours. Too bad they didn't stick with the tone of the first half-hour.
