Year:
2010
Rating: 7.0
Country:
France
Another Jean Reno tough guy film. His weathered
face a criss-cross plateau of lines dug deep. You can't get much tougher
than this. He takes 22 bullets in an assassination attempt and within a few
days leaves the hospital to search for his killers. Not to kill them but
to understand why they did it. He was a top ranked member in the French mafia
in Marseilles but had retired a few years back and gone straight with his
family. No more looking over his shoulder. No more night time meetings. No
more killing those who needed killing. He left it all behind him but his
past came looking for him and he needs to know who did it. It doesn't take
long.
This is basically a good old-fashioned gangster film. It could have been
made by Warner Brothers in the 1930s. Loyalty, betrayal and death. A code
of killer's morality and no code at all. Anything goes - even murdering children.
No one can do this much better than Reno except a De Niro. They both share
the same silent menacing aura in these films. As long as you don't cross
them they will stick with you. But once you do, count yourself among the
dead.
Charly (Reno) is a family man. Elderly mother, wife, two children. The evil
he did is always with him but he has swept it under his carpet as best he
can and made peace with himself but the carpet will be lifted some day. In
a parking garage it is when five men wait for him with enough gun power to
kill a battalion of men. 22 bullets they dig out of him but he lives. They
send a killer to the hospital but he lives. The French title is L'immortel.
The Immortal. It seems that way. When he finds out that the hit was ordered
by an old friend that he sold his business to he tells the few men still
loyal to him that he will not retaliate. That isn't who he is any more. Let
it go. But they come again and feed one of his men to the dogs. This time
it is personal. Trying to kill me is business but not this. He finds them
all celebrating and tells them I won't kill you all right now - but I will
some day, some where. And the killing begins. One by one. Nothing really
new here. It is wall to wall Reno being tough and tender. At nearly two hours
it goes on for too long and none of the kills are particularly imaginative.
One to the heart, one to the head. Clean and quick.
