Too much of everything

just watch it!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There's a serial killer loose in a small mountain town located in rural France, and who better to track them down than the country's two most prolific film actors (or the ones with better physiques than Gerard Depardieu anyway), Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. Reno is the seasoned, slightly eccentric Parisian detective, called in to assist and step on the toes of local investigator Cassel, who is too hot headed to realize he could use the help. A body has washed up in a nearby river, mutilated to an unspeakable degree in gruesomely specific ways (think Sev7n on ice). The town just happens to be solely inhabited by the creepy residents of a nearby university that is notorious for incestuous classism and rumours of ties to the occult. You can imagine where this is heading, and it's fun watching Reno and Cassel follow the bloodstained breadcrumb trail towards increasingly grisly secrets that would test even David Fincher's gag reflex. Genetic research, mysterious twins (both played by Nadia Fares), and multiple corpses are a few of the hurdles our two heroes encounter. It's delightfully convoluted, in the best way possible. Some people say that less is more, but I find that makes way for laziness and complacency, two attributes you don't want to find in the horror/thriller genre. I'd rather a film throw every little brainstorm and margin doodle into the mix, even if it doesn't all add up, than present a barely filled in canvas that begs for more. The real stunner with this one is a near Bond- esque climax set on a giant glacier overlooking the valley below, full of desperate violence and giddy exposition. You'll need a strong stomach for the dark places this one ventures to, but it will reward you with crisp cinematography and lurid, blood soaked intrigue. Brutal stuff though.

I'm not a fan of French movies as a rule, especially over-rated "horror" or thriller flicks - I find them either excruciatingly slow & boring (eg Vanished) or gratuitously violent with no decent plot or common sense - just violent for the sake of it and often with ridiculous tacked on "plot twists" in an effort to appear "clever"(eg Haute Tension). But this one really grabbed me. I'm glad I gave it a chance despite it's "Frenchness". Sure it has some problems towards the end some of which I understand are due to the difficulties of adapting the novel to screen, but I had no problem understanding what was going on. I loved the relationship between the two leads & the interesting way two story lines intersected. The direction & camera work was top notch, great soundtrack that enhanced the atmosphere and terrific acting from the cast. The plot was great too and pretty much everything worked the way it should. It needed a bit more fleshing out & explanation but it's not too obtuse without it. Just feels unfinished.It's a shame the ending is a bit of a let down but it doesn't detract from the movie overall - it's still well worth watching. It just brings it down a few points from what could have been a top rating flick. This is well worth watching for people who enjoy a good thriller, can stand a little gruesomeness but are not interested in pointless slasher movies or self-congratulatory plodding "mysteries". If you can handle the level of "gore" in say Criminal Minds or Silence of the Lambs you should be OK with this one.

There can on occasion be found an unneeded snobbery amongst genre fans, a tendency to regard the mainstream as some tawdry monolith spewing trash while the best of genre cinema can only be found at the fringes, from foreign realms or the underground. The Crimson Rivers stands as an ideal corrective to such thinking, a French film beautiful, shallow, silly and fun. In short it does little better than most of its ilk, getting its biggest boost from swoon worthy locations but ultimately forgettable stuff with only a couple of especially bright spots. Its a killer thriller, a bound and broken body minus hands and eyes is found hanging from a mountainside, further remains are found and an expert from Paris gets on the case, backed up by a provincial copper who finds their case involving grave desecration pulls them into the same grisly plot. As the expert elder of the piece Jean Reno is his useful self in a performance of low key cool and grizzled authority, a decidedly familiar turn but fairly amusing to watch as he generally is. Vincent Cassel fares better as his younger counterpart, more of a live wire energetic type he puts in more of a compelling effort, together the two work well, they never get beyond the clichés of such a pairing but they are good to watch as they go through the predictable motions. Rounding out the mains is Nadia Fares in a one note sexy/tough kinda role, she has the looks and presence for the character so she fills it quite nicely, without making much of an impression. The film is at its best in its first half, building a sense of mystery and strangeness, luxuriating in its mountain setting with some great aerial shooting and breathtaking scenes atop a glacier then delving within a crevasse. There are a couple of suitably grisly after the fact corpses (the opening a good example, complete with insect ravaged wounds and whilst some of the dialogue is over expository and silly there is a certain sinister pull to events. But when the strands of Reno and Cassel entwine the film rapidly looses the plot and by the end has become outright laughable. Its not that the explanation isn't a good idea at all, just that the film presents no characters or themes with any kind of depth and by the end the film is getting into subject matter that does require some depth. After all, this isn't a giallo or a slasher where such things can be successfully avoided, it needs commitment to work. Still, I was never bored exactly and I did get some chuckles even as the film was going south. Probably a worth one time watch, but there isn't anything here to get too excited about, 5/10 from me.

This was a really good who done it film. A detective Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno) is brought to a university on a mountain where a grisly murder has taken place. Clues lead him to find out what is going on in the peaceful campus. In the background is another detective Max Kerkerian (Played by Vince Cassel) who in his own scrimmage of finding out a small vandalism of Swasticas on a grave leads him to the university as well. More clues emerge as each detective finds out that the heads of the university has secretly been manipulating human genomes to create again, the master race. But to give the plot more thickness, Niemans (Reno) discovers by his new partner, that the grave for which the vandalism took place was empty. The supposed little girl who died was not there. This twist of the movie kept me on the edge of my seat. With grand clues, dead ends, mutilated bodies, and dogs for which Niemans has a fear of. All together has given this gem of a thriller a big thumbs up for a foreign film. Jean Reno is at his best, as well as Vince Cassel who by any means is a really good detective role player. His character has wit, strength, and above all a keen eye for clues. Both work really well together. I hope in the future, both can do another of such films.