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THE CRIMSON RIVERS
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As December 7, 1941 was to our grandparents, as November 22, 1963 was to our parents, so will September 11, 2001 be to us -- a day after which no one can see the world the way we saw it before. The epoch-defining chasm we have unwillingly crossed changes our perception of THE CRIMSON RIVERS, a new French horror-thriller.
In fictional Guernon (which Anglicizes to Nowar, a significant subtextual theme lost in subtitles), an isolated Alpine town that cradles a famous college, a dean is found not merely murdered but tortured and hideously mutilated. Over the opening credits, we focus on his brutalized, frozen, naked corpse, up close to the hairy mottled skin where the mosquitoes daintily step. This can happen, the movie visually assaults us, people are capable of this.
Enter, with suitable modern nihilistic noir credentials, Commissioner Pierre Niemans (dead-eyed unshaven Jean Reno of the original French LA FEMME NIKITA and THE PROFESSIONAL), a specialist in grotesque murders. We have seen such cops in stylized horror movies like SEVEN, the BONE COLLECTOR, and even SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but all such movies focus, with a macabre admiration, on the twisted ingenuity of the villain. Not here. All we know of this killer is his handiwork. As Niemans and his eventual meet-cute-cop-buddy Max Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel) follow their individual threads, we are ever reminded that each individual we meet is superficially reasonable, but somewhere among them lies a maniac.
Visually and sonically, the movie is stunning, with beautifully crisp camerawork, breathtaking gray and white mountain rock fells and cold streams, and a stirring, hypnotic score. In we are drawn, frightened and horrified and mesmerized, until a denouement that ... is an absurd plot armature, a head-shaking, you've-got-to-be-kidding travesty of a deus ex machina. Still, because this breach of movie contract arises so late and so close to the slam-bang ending, its utter unbelievability does not undo the power of its unflinching presentation of evil roaming free.
With their emphasis on consequence-free visuals, Hollywood explosion flicks (pick a Bond movie) and martial-arts ballet glamour (as in CROUCHING TIGER) have lulled us into forgetting that, though we wish it were not so, there is evil in this world. THE CRIMSON RIVERS makes us remember. A week ago Nancy and I would have emerged from the theater, shaken our heads, and thankfully dismissed it as a depraved fantasy. Today it says something more ... and it tells us that, if we do not like what it says, we must do more than simply shake our heads.