Bloodwank 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.

T Y It's really depressing to visit Paris and learn that they have rap stars in France. Not that I didn't expect them to be able to rap, but the form is so completely a product of lower income American black culture that it's absurd to find it transplanted wholesale to another culture with different forces at work.As for who requires France to make thrillers as superficial, unsatisfying and failed as our own, I cannot say.The movie Americanizes lowbrow French entertainment to a grotesque degree. It features a plot so convoluted that it makes a viewers ask; what kind of dim-witted secret society stages elaborate murders so as to draw police attention? Rather than offer a clever solution the movie cops out (way out) by invoking ever more absurd scales, that makes one wonder how on earth it can end. But it does end, quite badly, and after our heros have encountered (supposedly) the worst that humanity has to offer, they stick around for an insipid five second closing shot in which they shrug off what for most people (especially the French) would have been cause to ruminate on the sources of mankind's desperation & evil.Instead, they brush it all off with a dumb, hearty laugh... and the credits roll; the same dumb, hearty laugh that ended 90 percent of American cop shows in the 70s. Absurd.

truehorrorfan People can comment on camera work, imagery, and acting quality of a film, but all of that does not matter if the writing is...well...crap. Perhaps something was lost in translation here but the film had so many plot holes that bowling balls would fall through it. I wont explain specifics to avoid spoilers but by the time the facts, twists, and the killer was revealed I just didn't care. It was not "Oh my god," but "Ok, sure, whatever." This was due to a poor story development which meanders and looses it's audience, not to mention poor pacing which made it quite anti-climatic.I gave it a five out of 10 because the story had potential, however it was told poorly, acting and imagery aside.One last rant: What was the deal with the transplanted fight scene in the "paintball club?" The choreography there was terrible and did not look real. It appeared to be a feeble attempt at making it seem like an action movie.I know that the french can do better than that, considering "high tension", and "frontiers" to name a few.

Graham Greene The best detective stories allow their central arc of enigmatic mystery to unravel slowly, leaving behind a trail of clues for the audience to follow. Therefore, it is important when adapting the story to a medium such as film that the clues aren't signalled too early, giving the audience the chance to search in the dark with only a few subtle elements of light to work with. It is also important that the film and its various strands of character, theme and narrative all eventually lead to the same place, confounding but also confirming what the viewer had expected all along.The Crimson Rivers (2000) by La Haine (1995) director Mathieu Kassovitz sticks to this method fairly closely for the most part; giving us the usual archetypes familiar from this kind of heavily investigatory detective fiction alongside the usual contemporary preoccupations with dark, gloomy, atmospheric visuals and intriguing, idiosyncratic characters. It is also refreshing to see a director intelligent enough to allow the film's location to become the centre of their story; framing his scenes so that the ominous presence of the towering French Alps casts a foreboding and omnipotent shadow across these characters and the story itself to perfectly set up a certain sense of the foreshadowing of later, thematic events. As the Alps hold a serious significance over the direction the narrative will take, Kassovitz understandably exploits the set up perfectly; using forced perspectives to give the impression of the characters gradually being surrounded, even asphyxiated by the landscape, to create a more potent feeling of suffocating claustrophobia.The idea of claustrophobia is mirrored by the interior production design, which dwarfs our protagonists against low ceilings cracked with damp, drab, monochromatic tones and deeper shades of autumn, and stark, naturalistic lighting with plenty of shadows. These visuals complement the narrative beautifully, going beyond the obvious and somewhat lazy comparisons to David Fincher's classic detective thriller Se7en (1996) to create a style and atmosphere that seems just right for this kind of twisted, slow-building set up. The story is admittedly fairly well worn, with two seemingly mismatched cops thrown together in the pursuit of a vicious serial killer and slowly developing a strong bond as their lives and rank are thrown into jeopardy and confusion. So essentially we're dealing with the typical buddy-cop clichés, though with more believability and less reliance on comic relief, with any real attempt at humour usually undercut by the explicitness of the violence and that fantastic air of dark, disturbing dread.The central performances from Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel are both very good, with Reno portraying the older, wiser, more intuitive detective paired off with Cassel's headstrong loose cannon. Combined with that fantastic build up of slow burning tension, the intricacies of the plot and the thick air of pure atmospheric dread, we should be looking at a standout, A+, modern-day crime thriller. Unfortunately, the last ten minutes of the film suffer from a serious drop off, creating a dénouement worthy of the worst kind of late night B-movie or TV thriller. It's a real shame too, with the first hour of the film creating such a searing and enigmatic sense of mystery that really draws us, in before the pieces of the puzzle are blown away by a bizarre climax that stretches plausibility beyond breaking point. As a result, the ending seems like an anachronism within the film's post-modern framework; offering us all the answers presented at once in a manner that seems incredibly lazy and unfair given the great sense of mystery that was previously unfolding.In this respect, I would draw comparisons to two of the most recent films by Italian horror/thriller director Dario Argento, in particular Sleepless (2000) and The Card Player (2004). Both of these films feature a great first half rife with mystery and suspense, but loose it in the final act with a complete disregard for logic, character or the thrill of expectation. In similar fashion, the first hour of The Crimson Rivers is excellent; great style, great characters and a story that pulls us in. Unfortunately, the pace cannot be maintained and the end of the film will no doubt leave many viewers angry, confused and severely disappointed.