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A Masterpiece!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film was okay, not brilliant but good enough to watch if you want an easy time with not much tension. It felt more like a soap opera episode. From the trailers I knew they would kill the original story but I thought it would still be a good movie, because of the actors. It's not horrible, the acting is fine and I like this way of filming, but the plot is quite shallow at parts and the characters do inexplicable things. There are serious plot holes, because the film makers spent lots of screen time showing us naked behinds of dead bodies and there was no time left for giving the characters some depth and consistency. The writers go straight to the point before the first ten minutes and then try to build tension on things that couldn't support it. All the plot holes are explained in the book.*spoiler*The scare wasn't in the possibility of a plague outburst but in not understanding how the trails were connected and why.If you've read the book or intend to do so, don't watch the film. Don't even think about it. It has changed EVERYTHING and reveals vital parts of the book in the first four minutes. Different characters, different plot, different ending. Only the basic story is the same, but that's like saying 'it's about a serial killer'. EVERYTHING is changed, this movie is definitely not based on F. Vargas book. In fact, it's the opposite for 75% of it.

Parisians wake one morning to find black 4s painted on their doors. Later, a town crier (those still exist?) in Paris receives cryptic messages about the return of The Plague and, sure enough, people start dying the blackest of deaths. It is up to Commissar Adamsberg (José Garcia) to find out just what is going on. This is in the same mold as the CRIMSON RIVERS films and starts off great. But when the full mystery is finally revealed an hour in, you will be pleading for the complexity of a SCOOBY DOO episode. Seriously, the last 10 minutes actually features the killer basically saying, "And I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for you..." Director Regis Wargnier (INDOCHINE) handles the multitude of characters well and there is a thrilling rooftop chase, but the film's reason for existing is a joke. The film adapts a novel by Fred Vargas, the pseudonym for Frédérique Audoin- Rouzea. Apparently Adamsberg is a recurring character in her stories and, just from what I have read briefly online, the guy is a bit more interesting that the lonely cop sketched here.

In Paris, many citizens go to the precinct since the doors of their apartments have been sprayed with a 4 and the letters "clt". When a dweller is found mysteriously dead in his apartment, Detective Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (José Garcia) and his partner Danglard (Lucas Belvaux) investigate the case and discover that plague may have killed the victim. Meanwhile, in the center of Paris, the former actor Joss Le Guern (Olivier Gourmet) survives reading advertisements in a square for the public; when he receives weird messages about an outbreak of plague that is coming to Paris, the former professor Hervé Decambrais (Michel Serrault) requests the warnings and goes to the library to research the meaning of the text, where he meets Adamsberg. Together they find that a maniac is killing people using flees contaminated by rats and spreading the disease in the city; without any clue, the police force do not have how to avoid the panic in Paris."Pars Vite et Reviens Tard" is a solid and classy French thriller with an original and engaging story; excellent directions and screenplay that succeed in developing several characters and situation in only 116 minutes running time; magnificent performances, highlighting the veteran Michel Serrault; and awesome music score. This movie is absolutely underrated in IMDb with only 5.4/10. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Sinais da Morte" ("Signs of the Death")

There are tons of movies based on books. Some are good, some are fine, and some are bad. As someone who read most of Fred Vargas's novels, I was quite disappointed by this movie adaptation of "Pars vite et reviens tard". There are too many plot and character changes, but, most importantly, the movie fails to seize the spirit of the novel - which effectively turns it in a bland and unoriginal police thriller.At its core, "Pars vite et reviens tard" (translated as "Have mercy on us all" in English) is a not-so-traditional police thriller in which we follow Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg as he tries to catch a mysterious murderer who makes it seem as if the plague kills his victims. The general storyline is followed in the movie, but most of the finer points have been modified; arguably to make the story more accessible to people who haven't read the book. Indeed, there are lots of details in the book and it would be impossible to include everything. Still, they made some very odd changes that somewhat disturbs the flow and character development.In the same line of thought, the casting came in as a surprise. The much missed Michel Serrault delivers erudite Decambrais pretty well, but others are blatantly different (both in physical appearance and personality) than their book counterparts (Danglard, Adamsberg's sidekick, was particularly botched in my opinion: even calling him a foil is giving him too much credit). For the most part, I found the acting to be generally bland and uninspiring.Of course, it's impossible for a movie to be made as a carbon copy of a book (and then, such a thing could turn out bad). Minor edits to the plot line and the look of the actors are things that can be forgiven, at least up to a certain point. What really kills the movie in my opinion is how it turns the unique style of Vargas's writing in a run-of-the-mill thriller. Before being about a police officer who runs after a bad guy, Vargas's novels are about the psychological depth of her characters, particularly Adamsberg. In the movie, Adamsberg is a bland cop whose distinguishing feature is his need of a woman at night to be able to make progress in the case.Overall, "Pars vite et reviens tard" is a disappointing movie for those who read the book. For others, it could pass as a decent police thriller, although the average acting and flow issues make it less interesting. I would warn those people though not to judge Vargas's novels on this adaptation, as it would be a big mistake.