Customer Reviews

Le Couperet (Original French Version With English Subtitles)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love telling people that Russell Crowe recommended this film to me. It isn't really a lie, more like an exaggeration of the truth. I follow him on Twitter (so sue me) and he was raving this film a few years back, talking about how Jose Garcia was phenomenal in it. He got my interest, and considering that the Leading Male category is notoriously my favorite, and Russell Crowe is my favorite current leading man (so I trust his taste level), I had to bite here.

I'm so glad I did.

`Le Couperet' is a very modern take on the film noir. It isn't as stagey as the classics, and so it breathes with a little more follow-through, much like Curtis's '97 masterpiece, `L.A. Confidential'. The story told is that of Bruno Davert, a middle-aged business man, married with two children who is very good at what he does. Despite his loyalty to his company, downsizing and relocation costs him his job. Two years later he is still unemployed and the economy is at such a low that he can't find any work. Desperation devises a plan in his head where this otherwise rather sensible man becomes a cold blooded killer, tracking down anyone who stands in his way of getting a plum job in a well-to-do paper company. Sure, he's nervous but he has to do this.

Perfectly meshing two worlds (it is serious and dark and provocative and yet equally witty and humorous), `Le Couperet' is a gem of a film. The construction and pacing is splendid, never aching on particulars long enough to become tiresome, but constantly solidifying our attention with its sharp edits and story progression. And then there is Jose Garcia, who is flawless. He delivers one of the best performances of the aughts, delving deep inside this man's psyche to find the heart of his newfound chaos. The way Jose wears each murder on his skin (scrub with soap) is achingly realistic. He also understands how to shade this performance to find the nuggets of humor and even charm in this everyman-turned-killer.

Costa-Gavras directs a winner here, a film that is sure to entertain as well as provoke.

Absolutely brilliant, modern take on noir, and extremely American though it has been transferred to France. In terms of pure comedy value it beats slapstick, but it offers much more than that - intelligent look at how economy of turbo-capitalism affects the lives of the middle-class. And it is not a direct translation of the book, a lot has been changed so there is still suspense left even for those who had read the novel. Highly recommend.

Bruno Davert (Jose Garcia) plays a chemist who loses his job. A few years later, still without a job, he decides to get a job by killing his competition.

A hilarious script, very well adapted from Donald Westlake's novel "The Ax". And superbly directed by Costa-Gavras.

Jose Garcia usually plays in comedies; this film gives him a chance to show a more dramatic and suspense role (the film is nevertheless a comedy), and he does it well.

Fun to watch once.

THE CORPORATION is an ambitious and demolishing film, that necessarily must be seen under several levels, its dramatic texture is incisive, mordacious and profoundly realist.

Since the first shot until the first word elapse four minutes and twenty six seconds, and the first lines are: "This is a confession." Because given these rules of the game, he is just a soldier who defends his trench.

A successful executive is suddenly removed from his job, after fifteen years of devoted service to the enterprise, the high management adduces reduction of costs and that set of commonplaces frequently said in this sort of action.

So, his well deserved status and professional achievements remain into a "zero atmosphere" . As you may suppose, after two years of unfruitful efforts, our central character decides to publish a postal code simulating an employment agency, in order to make a zealous analysis around the number of his potential rivals .

Since this decision, he gets his C.V, and decides into his gradually neurotic compulsiveness, to murder them to return his job in absence of competence.

The secondary personages play besides a sinister vision around the surrounding world: his son is a teenager who simply is out of control without INTERNET , his wife is a courageous human being who doesn't care to take two jobs to keep their social position.

Particularly remarkable is the employment of the semiotic language, there is a veiled tribute to Charlot (Monsieur Vedoux) in that smart sequence in which we see an ambulant misemployed imitating to Chaplin, on the other hand the clever allusion to important issues concerning to marketing, but above all is the gradual fragmentation as individuals, of people who simply does not know what to do in such undesirables position in which your social prestige, economical relations and self stem seem to vanish under their feet.

A struggling portrait of a contemporary and beating actuality. How to deal with this transition state?

Powerful, incisive, brilliant and demolishing approach around an issue that frequently tend to overlook, ignoring it or simply making new friends.