Entre chiens et loups (2002)

Entre chiens et loups is a French thriller film first released in 2002, directed by Alexandre Arcady.  The film stars Richard Berry, Saïd Taghmaoui, Joaquim de Almeida, Anouk Grinberg and Etienne Chicot.  It has also been released under the title: Break of Dawn.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


Adrien, a notorious crook, is released from jail but he has cancer and will die within six months.  He initially intends to spend what time he has left with his wife and son, but a Rumanian named Rodman makes him an offer he can’t refuse.  Adrien is to travel to Rumania with an accomplice, a suicidal young man named Werner, where they will take part in a staged assassination attempt.  Both Adrien and Werner will be shot dead by the victim’s bodyguards, and, in reward, their families will be handsomely rewarded.  With nothing to lose, Adrien accepts the contract, but on the day of the phoney assassination things do not go as planned…

Having directed a number of hugely popular policiers in the 1980s (notably the hit Le Grand pardon, 1982), Alexandre Arcady returned to the genre in 2002 with this obvious imitation of the American action thriller.  Despite an interesting plot and some well-choreographed action scenes, the film is marred by some artistic excesses (such as some laughably bad use of slow-motion effects) and uneven pacing.  There’s also more than a dollop of that trademark Arcady sentimentality, which makes certain scenes almost unbearable to watch.  The film’s biggest turn-off, however, is the surfeit of gratuitous violence: does anyone get any pleasure from watching the kind of sick sadistic butchery that this film seems to revel in?  On a more positive note, Richard Berry manages to bring some depth to his character and helps to make an implausible plot just about believable.  It’s a pity that his co-star, Saïd Taghmaoui, does almost the exact opposite…


© James Travers 2005

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