Too much of everything

Sadly Over-hyped

Beautiful, moving film.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Right from the first scene, not one decision by any character made any sense. Instead of creating suspense, each new plot twist forced me to ask: "Why would anyone do that?" It felt like a bad Agatha Christie novel, where every character had the common sense of Inspector Clouseau.Worse still, the characters didn't seem motivated by love, duty, guilt, fear, self-preservation, their careers or anything (except maybe ennui). So when their laughably silly plans go awry, the characters don't seem to really care, and neither does the audience. When a major reveal happens in a murder movie, one kind of expects a stronger reaction from the main character than saying, "I'm too old for this." So by the end of the movie, I didn't really care what happened to any of them. This gets two stars rather than one because some of the actors are good looking.

Once again a fine French actress was the selling point for me. Melanie Laurent has already graced some fine films as well as writing and directing the equally fine The Adopted. Requiem is the debut movie of writer-director Jerome Le Gris and I'd hate to have to pitch this to the suits in Hollywood. Europe's top hit man is in fact a woman who doubles as an opera singer, assassinations in Europe are controlled and farmed out by a priest, you're kidding, right. Only one of the four people who have reviewed it here seems to have caught on that this is a spoof in the tradition of those James Coburn's Derek Flint and Dean Martin's Matt Helm movies and if all else fails there is some spectacular scenery and lavish interiors to look at. Anyone who retched at the 'wholesome' catholicism as personified by Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald will savor the opening assassin where Laurent slips poison into the communion wafer, specifically the thirteenth wafer on the plate. As someone remarked this one may not get a wide release but Laurent is well up to snuff (sorry about that).

The deadliest hit-man in Europe is actually a woman and sings contralto. The toughest secret agent detailed to stop her is a guitar virtuoso. If you can swallow that and watch the rest of it as a straight thriller, you have a mental age of four. Tops.In fact, this is a hilarious send-up of three different genres all at once: Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller, Agatha Christie whodunnit and Italian giallo. Perhaps the director (quite rightly) doubted that the producers would allow him to make three different films in this vein, so he lumped all three together. Which I suppose makes the whole even funnier.The script goes out of its way to invent the most bizarre situations and then sabotage them in the most outlandish ways possible. Witness the outrageous murder method employed in the opening sequence, or the episode where the killer uses poison to fulfill her contract, only to realise she is a breath away from having a mass murder on her CV. All characters behave like children in a playground sand pit, set to gorgeous strands of Handel's Messiah. And the film looks ravishing, too, in the best 70s fashion, both outdoors and in.Bound to be a flop at the box-office (way, way too tongue-in-cheek for the popcorn-munching crowd), but should become a cult classic if there's any justice in this world.

I almost fell asleep during the viewing of this french thriller. Characters, storyline, editing, everything is tepid, boring, predictable. Tcheky Karyo, who plays here a kind of "shadow man", is nearly a cliché. Cornillac is laughable as an undercover agent. Only Melanie Laurent could be worthwhile, but her character falls apart after one half hour. Yes, I expected much more from this movie, I must admit that. This kind of topic, I saw it several years ago, in a 74 US TVM, starring Yvette Mimieux - HIT LADY - and it was far better than this one. Avoid this lousy film, at all costs. You have been warned.Perhaps at the nearly ending, when Tcheky Karyo explains to Melanie Laurent some things about her and her father, you may catch some gripping sequence. But that's all.Run away from it.