Scènes de crimes

This is the kind of movie which shows the paucity of French cinema when it comes to making thrillers.The director's desire to "sound American" is so glaring that you will not be fooled a minute,unless you have not seen a serial killer movie since "Peeping Tom".

Two male cops (or one and a half,more like,as you will see),horrible murders,a plot more complicated than complex.Charles Berling is not lucky with the genre(see the astoundlingly dumb "l'inconnu de Strasbourg" a couple of years ago).The scenes with his pregnant wife -which are supposed to be a counterpart for the otherwise noir atmosphere of the rest of the plot-are among the worst ever filmed.Add a steamy love scene between them and a gory autopsy to get a PG 12 and thus to attract the huge adolescent audience.A violent and absurd conclusion,followed by a silent epilogue who could make a nice commercial for the côte d'azur,it's really the silence of the lame.

Two french policemen are looking for a serial killer. This film is like a french "Silence of the Lambs". A serial killer leaves headless and handless bodies behind him. There are pretty similar scenes about cutting up dead people to get to know the killer better. But there's no FBI at work here, but the french police. Their methods aren't as sophisticated. And they don't look for a unique madman, cutting up his victims for a special purpose (like producing a skin costume). The killer here is astonishingly normal, simply killing for the pleasure of it, and cutting of heads just to make the work harder for the police, not to keep trophees of any kind. Charles Berling gives an astonishing performance and helps to lead the film in a more phylosophical area, asking one question: What's a life really worth? The answer: In the end it might not be worth much, but it is worth a try having one.

French version of movie of cops on the look for a serial killer. Story also focuses on private lives of both cops involved.

Lots of scenes happen in dark forests of the French Ardennes where the killer tends to operate and this creates a very gloomy atmosphere.On the whole this is a very well made and tense thriller and stays thought provoking until the end, but sadly not until the very end.

Because then it goes all wrong. The ending is weird and ruins the entire movie, which a damn shame as 95 % of the movie is quite good. Did the producers just ran out of money or did the crew just got tired and wanted to wrap up the movie asap ? I do not know who is to blame for such a shambles of an ending but if it was the director he should be serously considering giving up movie-making altogether. Probably a good thing then that he had to wait another 4 years to make a movie again («Agents secrets » with la Bellucci) and it seems it is pretty bad. Probably ruined the ending again.

All good movies have brilliant endings and just bungling it up this way is nothing less then an insult to the spectator.

In contrast to the other reviews I found "Scènes de crimes" neither to be a French Silence of the Lambs (not pretentious enough, which can't be said of "Les rivières pourpres"), nor does it portray the policiers as fools or less sophisticated. Instead, it showed a far more realistic depiction of police work and the police officers: most threads eventually lead to a cul-de-sac, and the cops are mere mortals. They're not driven by an existentialist need to fight evil etc. to define themselves. They are simply doing their job as good as they can. As to the ending: part of me thinks it's a cop-out, too. But on the other hand, maybe the finale simply tried to state that despite the depravity and indifference around us sometimes fate gives us a second chance. Even though it was only a short scene, the angry priest at the funeral stuck out. His sermon/rant about charity and respect strongly contrasted with the pervading moral numbness and sense of isolation. All in all a subtle, yet troubling thriller; and far better than "Les rivières pourpres" exactly because it DIDN'T try to be something it wasn't.