What a waste of my time!!!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

You will follow this movie with much attention and interest in terms of images and scenes but I must confess I have found the story itself in terms of contents a bit uninteresting since the plot has some coincidences that make it somewhat unbelievable. A couple is going to fetch their children who are at a summer camp in the south west of France. They are going by car from the north. The husband is a drunkard and he not only drank a lot already before their ride starts but he also keeps stopping now and then to have a drink on bars along the road. They begin to have fierce arguments between themselves and she ends up by leaving the car on one of his stops. He is bewildered when he comes back to the car and doesn't see her. She had left a note saying she was going to catch a train. From then on a succession of appalling incidents take place making the course of events very dramatic. It's a movie that keeps you attentive and alert all the time despite the fact that the plot itself is not very interesting.

Cedric Kahn's movie 'Red Lights' begins as a domestic drama, and one featuring an exceptionally unattractive couple at that: she, controlling and indifferent while he is stubborn and stupid. But after the pair separate during a long drive, the film enters darker territory. The film's structure is one some ways the reverse of that of a conventional thriller, with violent climax, nightmare, and moral redemption occurring in scrambled order: the film works because the viewer can never be certain that the worst is over. Although the initial portrayals are crude (with hindsight, one can say deliberately so), the acting strengthens as the plot thickens, avoiding melodrama and conjuring a mood of increasingly real terror. The cinematography is good as well: night-time roads have not looked this scary since 'Taxi Driver'.

Just for the record there are at least as many blue lights as red lights glowing along the various roads they travel on. An interesting but strange movie, never quite got the gist of it. Good thing he found those rocks to put under the tire. Terrific main character acting in body and face language but I never felt anything for him or his wife. I like identifying with someone in the movie, lucked out on this one. And hey was there ever a more docile bad guy and whats with that hand stuck in his pant pocket, hmmm, strong head though. And as so often happens in todays movies the ending duffs instead of the marriage. Lets have some true life endings once in awhile. Oh well, I'll call it a like anyway, I did stay till the end.

CAUTION - SpoilerThe French seem to have a very different idea from Hollywood about what constitutes a thriller. Hollywood likes to pitch a regular sort of guy into a baffling situation over which he has no control – Denzil Washington up against shadowy State operatives, or Harrison Ford against various bad guys, for example. The pace is fast and there is tension followed by a let-up at frequent intervals. We, the audience, identify with the protagonist and cheer for him or her to succeed. In this film there is a central character called Antoine who is stupid beyond belief – Homer Simpson is a philosopher by comparison – and who gets himself into a nasty but routine situation he could have easily avoided (if giving a lift to an escaped psychopath is routine). Then he blunders his way out of it. We sigh with relief at the end as he avoids a fate he richly deserves. Funnily enough he is almost sympathetic, for his one concern is the safety of his family – he might be thick but like Homer his heart's in the right place.There's plenty of tension though, built up in a different way. The camera spends a lot of time on close-ups, especially on Jean-Pierre Darroussin (of Marseilles movies fame), who plays Antoine. An air of menace is generated by car radio bulletins, heavy night-time road traffic, seamy roadside dives and Antoine's increasing intake of alcohol, which reaches almost incredible proportions. Most of the time is spent on busy French roads at and we spend a lot of time waiting for the inevitable crash.Jean-Pierre Darroussin turns in a remarkable performance. He is a sort of French everyman, an insurance company clerk married to a much more high-powered woman who is a corporate lawyer (Carole Bouquet – gorgeous as always). You wonder how they ever got together. Yet Darrousin somehow convinces us that the fate of this little man matters to her as well as to us.The original property, apparently was a story by the prolific French writer Georges Simenon of 'Maigret' fame, and the interrogation of Antoine by an extraordinarily well-briefed police officer is straight out of a Maigret episode. I would think the story has been updated a bit (career woman attorneys were pretty unusual in Maigret's day). I can't really think that the police would assume so readily that Antoine was not guilty of any crime – police officers are known more for their pedantry than imagination- but at least it helps the plot towards resolution.You won't like this movie if you don't like French films, but it is a vivid and absorbing entertainment, albeit about someone we pity rather than admire. It has not encouraged me to any do more driving in France, even in an apparently indestructible Rover.