Atirador de Elite

It had to happen: After watching many good french crime films, I found the first stinker. It's the worst kind of film, thinking it's smart when it's not. The lookout is just plain stupid. The plot has so many holes that it looks like swiss cheese. The film is totally unbalanced, trying to be many things at once: a cop film, a crime film about bank robbers, a serial killer film, a jail film and even a whodunit. The characters are weak and cliché. It sucks because the cast was good. I wonder why Daniel Auteuil made this awful film. He deserves better. I was misled by Auteuil and Placido (Romanzo Criminale is highly recommended). But why they turned this mockery of a script into a film is just beyond me. I hope the screenwriters didn't give up their day jobs.

I loved this movie. It got going really quickly, and there was plenty of edge seat action throughout, shot brilliantly, with great locations, and the quieter moments were filled with intense anxiety or dark menace, also done superbly, with great acting, and well cast. There are other sniper movies, but I can't remember seeing one in this context, as an element to a heist or to disrupt police actions. But there is greater originality than that, which I'd love to reveal but that would be a spoiler. The story is complex, and the characters deep. The lead may be familiar to others who have seen the supreme French spy drama The Bureau, and interestingly, plays a very similar role, that of the silent type, which he does with aplomb. I would have liked the movie to have run a little longer, to allow for more of the originality. It needed that to develop more dread, horror and danger. If any movie-makers read this, please take that on board if ever there is to be an English version. Loved the direction, colour and style of this movie. It was truly professional. Terrific!

Chief Inspector Mattei (Daniel Auteuil) and his team identifies bank robbers In Paris. They keep the group under surveillance and when they heist a bank, they are ready to arrest the criminals. However, the sniper Vincent Kaminski (Mathieu Kassovitz) surprises the detectives and the gang escapes. Soon Mattei and his team arrest Vincent that does not accept to snitch his friends. When Vincent flees from the prison, Mattei hunts him down in a cat and mouse game and learns what happened to his son that died in Afghanistan.

"La guetteur" is a French thriller with an excellent storyline and promising beginning with a fantastic shooting after the bank heist. The cast is also great, with Daniel Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz and even a cameo of Fanny Ardant. Unfortunately the screenplay has several pointless subplots and becomes a mess from the moment Mattei learns what happened to his son in Afghanistan to the disappointing conclusion with Mattei letting Vincent go without any reasonable explanation. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Atirador de Elite" ("Sniper")

So many good actors in such a disappointing movie. It looks like it was written in parts by different writers who did not know what the predecessor had written. Characters are superficial and not credible. For the first time, I found Daniel Auteuil not playing well.

I'll admit, THE LOOKOUT starts off on a strong footing, with an expertly-choreographed piece of action charting the fall-out from a bank robbery. It harks back to the glory days of a similar sequence in HEAT, and has you on the edge of your seat as the minutes stretch out. Unfortunately, once this is over, the rest of the film never even comes close to that quality.

The direction of the film is to capture the disintegration of a group of bank robbers as they variously betray and bump each other off, while a dogged cop remains hot on their heels. And sadly, it's nowhere near as interesting or exciting as it sounds. This is one of those films that fails to feature even a single remotely sympathetic character, so that you wonder throughout why you're watching.

That wouldn't matter if the calibre of the script and film-making were exceptional, but the truth is that they aren't. There's a kind of humdrum, seen-it-all-before sense of weariness about the whole production, best summed up by Daniel Auteuil's yawn-worthy cop. The sub-plots are muddled and the characters uninteresting, so that by the time the end eventually comes around you'll be wondering why you're supposed to care.