Title: Le Guetteur
Director: Michele Placido
Starring: Danieul Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz, Olivier Gourmet, Francis Renaud, Nicolas Briançon, Jérôme Pouly de la Comédie Française, Violante Placido, Luca Argentero.
The established Italian director and actor, Michele Placido, defines his new film as the French version of ‘Romanzo Criminale’ (a popular Italian criminal drama, whose movie version was directed by Placido, and was eventually made into a television series). But the director’s high hopes don’t match the actual outcome.
The cinematography of Arnaldo Catinari is beautiful, dark and overbearing, but it clashes tremendously with the director’s style of shooting, that resembles that used for television, with very tight close-ups. The screenplay, written by Cedric Melon and Denis Brusseaux, is lame and unclear: Detective Mattei hunts for the marksman who foiled the plan to catch a notorious team of bank robbers, and as the mysteries unveil, confusion conquers all. Along these lines the acting is lame, despite the talented cast: Daniel Auteuil, Mathieu Kassovitz, Olivier Gourmet , Francis Renaud, Nicolas Briançon, Jérôme Pouly de la Comédie Française, Violante Placido, Luca Argentero.
The general feedback of this Italian-French coproduction has been quite detrimental: during the Cannes Film Festival of 2012 and the past Rome Film Festival the appreciation was pretty feeble, whilst at the Taormina Film Festival the audience started booing. The French box-office has sentenced it as one of the least profit-making movies of 2012, since it has been a total flop. It will soon be out in Italian theatres, we’ll see if the producers of ‘Le Guetteur’ will get even with the Italic box-office.
Technical: B
Acting: C
Story: F
Overall: D
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
