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Memorable, crazy movie

As Good As It Gets

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Once again a fine French actress was the selling point for me. Melanie Laurent has already graced some fine films as well as writing and directing the equally fine The Adopted. Requiem is the debut movie of writer-director Jerome Le Gris and I'd hate to have to pitch this to the suits in Hollywood. Europe's top hit man is in fact a woman who doubles as an opera singer, assassinations in Europe are controlled and farmed out by a priest, you're kidding, right. Only one of the four people who have reviewed it here seems to have caught on that this is a spoof in the tradition of those James Coburn's Derek Flint and Dean Martin's Matt Helm movies and if all else fails there is some spectacular scenery and lavish interiors to look at. Anyone who retched at the 'wholesome' catholicism as personified by Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald will savor the opening assassin where Laurent slips poison into the communion wafer, specifically the thirteenth wafer on the plate. As someone remarked this one may not get a wide release but Laurent is well up to snuff (sorry about that).

This movie is one of the reasons why I signed up @ IMDb . This movie has stolen 90 minutes of my life and I want them back. To prevent others to watch this movie I will now list a few points why I do not like this movieFirst of all , it has a weak plot. There are thousand movies about female assassins but If you are shooting a movie about this topic , the screenplay should well implemented. But here's the reason why this could not work : the screenplay is awful! The story is very predictable and therefore boring, why did I watched it anyway? I don't know. Maybe I like the actor Tchéky Karyo ( Dobermann ) but he was the only who sticks out in this "movie".

The deadliest hit-man in Europe is actually a woman and sings contralto. The toughest secret agent detailed to stop her is a guitar virtuoso. If you can swallow that and watch the rest of it as a straight thriller, you have a mental age of four. Tops.In fact, this is a hilarious send-up of three different genres all at once: Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller, Agatha Christie whodunnit and Italian giallo. Perhaps the director (quite rightly) doubted that the producers would allow him to make three different films in this vein, so he lumped all three together. Which I suppose makes the whole even funnier.The script goes out of its way to invent the most bizarre situations and then sabotage them in the most outlandish ways possible. Witness the outrageous murder method employed in the opening sequence, or the episode where the killer uses poison to fulfill her contract, only to realise she is a breath away from having a mass murder on her CV. All characters behave like children in a playground sand pit, set to gorgeous strands of Handel's Messiah. And the film looks ravishing, too, in the best 70s fashion, both outdoors and in.Bound to be a flop at the box-office (way, way too tongue-in-cheek for the popcorn-munching crowd), but should become a cult classic if there's any justice in this world.

I almost fell asleep during the viewing of this french thriller. Characters, storyline, editing, everything is tepid, boring, predictable. Tcheky Karyo, who plays here a kind of "shadow man", is nearly a cliché. Cornillac is laughable as an undercover agent. Only Melanie Laurent could be worthwhile, but her character falls apart after one half hour. Yes, I expected much more from this movie, I must admit that. This kind of topic, I saw it several years ago, in a 74 US TVM, starring Yvette Mimieux - HIT LADY - and it was far better than this one. Avoid this lousy film, at all costs. You have been warned.Perhaps at the nearly ending, when Tcheky Karyo explains to Melanie Laurent some things about her and her father, you may catch some gripping sequence. But that's all.Run away from it.