HS - hors service (2001)
Directed by Jean-Paul Lilienfeld

Film Review

HS (Hors Service) starts out as a moderately amusing send up of Quentin Tarantino's gore-filled gangster films (unsubtle references to Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) crop up in every other scene) but soon runs out of steam as the silliness of its premise and dearth of original ideas become apparent.  Black comedy is the hardest of arts to master and is not something that has traditionally appealed to either French filmmakers or French cinema audiences.  Director Jean-Paul Lilienfeld makes a valiant attempt to extract humour from the world of the hired assassin, but, too in awe of Tarantino and his ilk, he ends up turning out a film that is a fair pastiche but not particularly funny.

The appeal of HS, if it has any at all, stems entirely from the unlikely ensemble that makes up the gang of Reservoir Dogs-like killers.  Dieudonné, François Berléand, Lambert Wilson, Loránt Deutsch and Stéphan Guérin-Tillié make such a weird bunch that anything is possible, and it is the attempts by these very capable actors to play against the gangster stereotypes that provides most of the film's entertainment value.  Wilson is such a cool dude he looks as if he could freeze the Atlantic ocean with one wiggle of his eyebrows; Berléand is your everyday homicidal paranoiac; and Deutsch is a Tamagochi addict who likes to combine DIY and torture.

Even if his character is scarcely credible (a man who has a Damascene conversion after beating his wife senseless), the popular comedian Dieudonné has the most impact and could easily pass as a pukka actor in this, his first leading film role.  (Within a few years of appearing in this film, Dieudonné's popularity would take a massive nosedive when he aligned himself with extreme right wing politics, effectively putting the breaks on his busy film and television career.) After the comparative failure of HS, Jean-Paul Lilienfeld amply redeemed himself with his next film, the wonderfully off-beat La Journée de la jupe (2008).

Film Synopsis

Marchand is happy with his life, until the day his wife discovers he is a professional hitman and not, as he claims to be, a shoe salesman.  A violent domestic row ends with Marchand punching his wife into a coma, an act he soon bitterly regrets.  Unable to execute his next assignment, Marchand decides to turn over a new leaf, believing that by doing so his wife will come out of her coma.  Naturally, this is not to the liking of the other four members of his gang - Francis, Louis, Victor and M'sieur - who decide to terminate their association with Marchand in a suitably bloody manner...