Le Tueur (2008)
Directed by Cédric Anger

Film Review

Cédric Anger, screenwriter and former critic on the Cahiers du cinéma, makes an impressive directing debut with this stylish thriller-drama, a slick variation on the classic French film noir polar with a bitter existentialist edge to it.  Anger's previous screenwriting credits include such diverse works as Werner Schroeter's Deux (2002) and Xavier Beauvois' Le Petit lieutenant (2005), and here he scripts an intensely compelling drama revolving around a hitman and his intended victim.

Although Le Tueur superficially resembles the familiar polar in its style and gangster trappings, it is an altogether different kind of film, driven not by the exigencies of plot but by the complexities of the two main characters, superbly played by Gilbert Melki and Grégoire Colin.  This is more a character study than a conventional thriller, one whose deeply unsettling mood contributes both dramatic tension and a bleak lyricism.  The film's haunting sense of melancholia is at its most potent in the sequences where dialogue is absent and we enter the minds of the two protagonists by their subtle gestures and their interaction with the world around them.

Initially, the two main characters appear to be polar opposites, one nervous and inoffensive, the other cold and deadly.  But as their true natures become apparent, we soon realise that first impressions can be very deceptive.  Neither character is as straightforward as he appears, and so the drama that ensues is far from predictable.  The oft-used film noir device that villains and heroes have, ultimately, little to distinguish them is what underpins this strange and beguiling film.   Life's victims are never easy to spot, as the film's viciously ironic ending makes clear.  Elegantly composed with a disturbing quietude, Le Tueur offers a haunting excursion into the darker precincts of the human soul. Anger followed up this seductive debut piece with two further distinctive thrillers, L'Avocat (2011) and La Prochaine fois je viserai le coeur (2014).

Film Synopsis

Léo Zimmerman is a successful businessman who is looking forward to spending Christmas with his beloved daughter.  His plans look as if they are about to be frustrated when a suspicious-looking young man named Dimitri Kopas shows up in his office and tries to pass himself off as a client.  Zimmerman sees through Kopas's charade straight away and realises that he is in fact a hired killer who intends murdering him.  After being stalked by the stranger for several days, Zimmerman becomes so distressed that he is unable to sleep.  In the end, he confronts Kopas and makes him an offer that would seem to suit them both.  The businessman will agree to let the killer fulfil his contract, providing he gives him a few days in which to make provision for his daughter's future.   As it is the festive season, Kopas can hardly refuse, but in agreeing to the strange proposal is he making a terrible mistake...?