L’Enquête Corse (2004) - film review

Rémi François, alias Jack Palmer, is a private detective based in Paris.  He readily accepts the challenge to find Ange Leoni, last seen on the island of Corsica, to give him the deeds to a private residence.  Unbeknown to Rémi, Leoni is the leader of a band of notorious Corsican separatists, who is being pursued by the island’s police.  Within minutes of arriving in Corsica, Rémi finds himself in the midst of a hornets’ nest.  Harassed by police, targeted by terrorists, he ends up falling for the charms of a beautiful woman, who happens to be Leoni’s sister…

A decade after their great success in Les Visiteurs (1993), Jean Reno and Christian Clavier are once more reunited in this madcap live action adaptation of a popular comic book.  Having seen these two actors work so well together in an earlier film, it’s pretty shocking to watch them waste their time and their talents in this clumsy, juvenile piece of lowbrow farce.  Once the entire world’s supply of stock clichés about Corsicans have been used up in the first thirty minutes or so, the film descends into what looks like a poor man’s James Bond spoof and quickly loses momentum – the narrative rambles all over the place and the jokes just seem to dry up.  Hard to imagine that the duo which gave us so many laughs in Les Visiteurs could fail to inject any decent humour into this stillborn comic disaster.

© James Travers 2006

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