The Crimson Rivers (2001)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Memorable, crazy movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Parisian police commissioner Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno) is called in to investigate a murder of 32-year old single professor Rémy Caillois of mountain-side picturesque university in Gueron. He's been horribly beaten left naked in a fetal position on the side of a mountain. The university is an isolated self-sufficient incestuous place. Meanwhile volatile inspector Max Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel) is investigating a grave desecration and a school break in.I really like the start with the creepy isolated location and the vicious murder investigation. I like the tone of it and I love Jean Reno's work. Then they split the movie into two investigations. I have nothing against Vincent Cassel or his side of the story. I just couldn't wait for them to get back to Reno. It just breaks up the movie and takes away the tension. The two investigations give off different tones anyways. Around midway, the two detectives are forced together but it needed to happen sooner. They form a fine combative duo. With more time together, they could create more chemistry in the relationship. The mystery is a convoluted one and not altogether satisfying. There is just one too many craziness going on.

This was a really good who done it film. A detective Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno) is brought to a university on a mountain where a grisly murder has taken place. Clues lead him to find out what is going on in the peaceful campus. In the background is another detective Max Kerkerian (Played by Vince Cassel) who in his own scrimmage of finding out a small vandalism of Swasticas on a grave leads him to the university as well. More clues emerge as each detective finds out that the heads of the university has secretly been manipulating human genomes to create again, the master race. But to give the plot more thickness, Niemans (Reno) discovers by his new partner, that the grave for which the vandalism took place was empty. The supposed little girl who died was not there. This twist of the movie kept me on the edge of my seat. With grand clues, dead ends, mutilated bodies, and dogs for which Niemans has a fear of. All together has given this gem of a thriller a big thumbs up for a foreign film. Jean Reno is at his best, as well as Vince Cassel who by any means is a really good detective role player. His character has wit, strength, and above all a keen eye for clues. Both work really well together. I hope in the future, both can do another of such films.

This film was shot in English for the main actors and not dubbed afterwards, or if it was it was by these main actors. That gives them a sort of flat accent, without being French, yet not quite natural. The film is an action film in the Alps, in winter, with breath-taking scenes in the mountains, even an avalanche. The plot itself is simple but at the end only. They keep us in the blue or the dark all along. A French university that was trying to produce the perfect race by manipulating the genes of people by organizing their births and shifting babies around in a maternity to make sure the selection worked. That required quite a lot of planning and secrecy and all of it criminal to the utmost. Till twin survivors of these swamps arrive on campus and start cleaning up the plate and that's when the police comes into the picture. All that is rather simple as I said but with the French art of hiding up the truth as long as possible and transporting us from right to left and dumping us in the middle so that we are finally amazed by the simplicity that we had not seen of course. And the eyes being an essential element in this criminal case we are those who are tickled around the gills. But for a bunch of girls they did a good job at keeping the police at bay and us panting.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Recap: A calm and remote, but at the same time, secluded and elitist, college in the alps is shaken by a hideous murder. The head librarian is mutilated and left dead, hanging over 60 meter up a steep cliff. To aid the local police Pierre Niemans is sent from Paris. He is a legend among the officers and has specialized in odd murders. However, here I fumbles in the dark. And everything seem to come to a point when Max Kerkerian, a lieutenant in a nearby town, suddenly looks for the same suspect in connection to accident which killed a little girl over 20 years ago.Comments: A good enough thriller that was able to keep interest all the way, despite being a little too predictable in the end. Meant to be a real hunt in the dark, too much of the solution surfaces a little too early to give this thriller a real edge.Luckily the story is driven by characters played by quality actors, Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. Both are underrated and a little lost to the big world in French cinema. It's unfortunate because both are really good. Jean Reno has had his share of Hollywood fame but Cassel has mostly been given parts as the bad guy outside France. A real pity, because he has shown that he handles all aspects of acting, and he does here again. Whatever fault this movie has, it is not because it is lacking in its lead actors.And there is not much lacking in the story either. It is a good thriller with its full share of suspense and a little adventure. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, it doesn't really hold all the way through. But it was good fun to watch it.This is a movie fully able to compare with movies from England and North America and to disregard it because its origin is a mistake. And most actors are fluent in English and has dubbed their own voices. However, if you have a choice, my recommendation would to be the French audio and English subtitles. Then you will not get the annoying fact of the dialog being out of sync with the actors lips.7/10