Le Choix des armes (1981) - film review

Three criminals break out of prison and go on the run.  In a bloody shootout, one of them is wounded.  His punk accomplice, Mickey, takes him to a remote country house belonging to a former gangland boss, Noël Durieux.  Whilst the latter tends to his dying friend, Mickey drives off to Paris in a fit of pique.  When he returns, he finds Durieux’s house is being searched by the police.  Thinking that the retired gangster has betrayed him, Mickey heads back to Paris where he tries to reacquaint himself with his young daughter.  Police chief Bonnardot and his impulsive aide Sarlat are tasked with bringing Mickey to justice, by any means.  Sarlat confronts Mickey at Noël’s home, but it is Noël’s wife Nicole who dies in the crossfire.  When Noël hears of this, he resolves to track down Mickey and kill him, not realising that it was Sarlat who shot his wife...

Director Alain Corneau proves himself to be the master of the 1980s French policier in this, his third, and arguably most successful, foray into the crime-thriller genre.  Meticulously plotted, skilfully directed and faultlessly acted, Le Choix des armes is one of the few French thrillers of the 1980s which holds true to the rules of the traditional polar without feeling the need to ape its less worthy American counterpart (which by this stage had all but degenerated into a spectacle of mindless violence, the legacy of Dirty Harry.).  In his most polished film so far, Corneau shows that he is a worthy successor to the godfather of the policier, Jean-Pierre Melville, and, appropriately, the film employs some of the later’s visual and thematic motifs.  Melvillian notions such as honour amongst hoodlums and the moral equivalence of crooks and cops underpin the plot, whilst the masculine world is portrayed, in true Melville fashion, as something that is a cold, violent and terribly solitary place.

Corneau’s masterful mise-en-scène is the perfect complement to Michel Grisolia’s well-honed script, whilst Pierre-William Glenn’s atmospheric, noirish photography brings a sustained mood of oppression and tension to the piece which, towards the end of the film, becomes unbearably stifling.  On the surface, Le Choix des armes resembles several other French thrillers of the 1980s, but look a little closer and it is apparent that this is a far more complex and nuanced film than most of its kind.  Notice how intricately the characters are developed - they are not the familiar stereotypes but extremely convincing individuals who constantly take us by surprise.  How fitting then that they should be portrayed, and portrayed to perfection, by some of the greatest French actors of the period.  Yves Montand and Gérard Depardieu fit their respective roles so well that you cannot imagine any other actor in their shoes.

Set in opposition to the seductively cool and introspective Montand, Depardieu immediately arouses our disgust as a deranged and manic psychopath.  Both are sinister portrayals of hardened criminals, but whilst Depardieu’s is more disturbing, both are calculated to win over our sympathy in the end.  By contrast, the police are portrayed as inefficient buffoons or gutless sharpshooters – Michel Galabru and Gérard Lanvin respectively.  Against this testosterone-charged backdrop of scheming and brutality, Catherine Deneuve appears harrowingly vulnerable as the only significant female character in the drama.  Like a solitary candle illuminating a darkened room, Deneuve’s presence emphasises the grim nihilist nature of the crime world, a touch of fragile humanity in a universe of masculine perversity. For aficionados of the traditional French polar, Le Choix des armes is a must-see film.  Not only does it confirm Alain Corneau’s standing as one of French cinema’s most accomplished directors, it is also a captivating work in its own right, a film noir which definitely deserves to be named as such.

© James Travers 2004-2011

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