.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

This review courtesy of 14-year old Zach Montague who contacted the facilitator of this web site to proclaim his love of film and his desire to one day be a film critic.

Well here we are again, in a world where evil yet brilliant murderers begin to kill people in unique and interesting ways. Yes we've seen this before and yes we've seen this done better. Yet, The Crimson Rivers brings something new to the table. That's right, it's French. Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel star as two French police detectives, who's two separate cases begin to lead them down the same investigative paths.

The investigations take place in the Alps, in a town where a famous University is located, and where the mayor also happens to be the dean. When the bodies are found and examined, we discover that the victims were tortured in a groundbreaking way. But aren't they always?

Director Mathieu Kassovitz (Who recently made the Halle Berry thriller Gothika) lingers on the corpses and other gruesome details of the murders, things that are not pretty to see, which makes the usually beautiful looking film seem ugly. What do I mean by beautiful? The Alps, the University, all seem so epic and huge, and the camera sweeps overhead giving us an incredible view of the vast landscape and leaving us with a sense of 'wow'. There are some truly beautiful things here. Kassovitz is definitely talented and the first hour is truly great and in the true style of Se7en, but then falls into the absurd.

From kickboxing fights, to elaborate and hilariously unbelievable motives, the movie defiantly falls apart in the second half, but don*t get me wrong, it still supplies the thrills. The film is very difficult to follow, it involves many different things such as revenge, skinheads and mutations which makes it quite original yet its still presented in a non-original way. Kassovitz shows that he is a fan of films such as Se7en and Anatomie, the German thriller, and proves that he can do stylish and tense action scenes along with dark and creepy thrills. Yet the direction isn't the problem with this film. The problem is that we've seen it all before. All that's changed is the killers identity and motive. There isn't a character in this that we haven't seen in another American film and the dialogue is simply routine.

The film does have some beautiful shots of the landscape and a finale which is both riveting and nerve racking, yet I couldn't escape the feeling that I had seen it all before and the characters were walking in their own footsteps. That said, I would bet good money that Kassovitz will become one of the most respected directors in Hollywood. His name might be hard to remember, but give it a few years.