Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

tieman64 Mathieu Kassovitz's "The Crimson Rivers" is one of the more watchable "Se7en" knock offs. A deliberately lurid and ridiculously fast moving serial killer/detective movie, the film finds a pair of mismatched detectives braving incessant rain, snow, thunder storms and dark shadows to catch various gruesome villains.The film lays the style, atmosphere and mood on thick, features actors Vincent Cassel and Jean Reno as super-cool scenery chewing cops, knows how to milk suspense, silence, anticipation and horror, features a very good foot chase, some very good camera work, and is stylish without being too tacky. The character Reno plays channels Morgan Freeman's character in "Se7en", whilst Cassel channels Brad Pitt's. The film also cribs the better bits from "Silence of the Lambs", "Jennifer 8" and "Manhunter" - all good genre films - but because this whole "gothic police detective" (which originated with Edgar Alen Poe, father of the detective story) genre spins around archetypes, familiarity, mood and the cosy embrace of convention, you don't care. For more radical fare within this genre, seek out Bruno Dumont's "L'humanité", or perhaps "The Wire".The film's plot – some business about Nazi super soldiers - recalls both "The Boys From Brazil" and "Name of the Rose", only faster, harder and with more rain. The film climaxes with a dumb car chase, a dumb showdown, and then an even dumber CGI avalanche. Some of its camera work is inspired by both De Palma and Kubrick. Unlike "Se7en" copycats like "Kiss The Girls" and "The Bone Collector", "The Crimson Rivers" goes for a more operatic, more voluptuous, more shamelessly lurid, more deliberately macabre tone. It's what "Scorsese" recently tried and failed to do with "Shutter Island" (and earlier, "Cape Fear").If this review plays like a string of references, its because "The Crimson Rivers", a postmodern collage, is itself all about references and ticked boxes. 7.9/10 – Good popcorn. See "Jeniffer 8", "Silence of the Lambs", "Memories of Murder", "Mother", "Manhunter" and "Se7en".

Baron Ronan Doyle It seems to me, and here I may be quite quite wrong, that both Reno and Cassel are French stars who have made it sufficiently big to crack the American market, yet still returning regularly to film home productions. As such, Les Rivières Pourpres seemed to me to be a Heat/Righteous Kill of sorts: a vehicle to pair together two screen legends.Sent from Paris to assist in the solution of a brutal murder in the university town of Guernon, Pierre Niemans struggles to connect the mysterious dots. Contemporaneously, Max Kerkerian investigates the desecration of a young girl's grave. Inevitably, their paths are thrown together, and they must team up to solve their mutual case.In its opening fifteen minutes, Les Rivières Pourpres makes it seem as though it might take any of many routes to completely different films. A standard police thriller is what it eventually settles upon, after some cinematographic flourishes hint toward the more appealing aspect of a drama of the effect upon detectives of witnessing the horrors they investigate. The flourishes I have mentioned are impressive, but taken a degree too far on more than one occasion. Twice used is the classic dolly zoom, and twice is it wasted, adding nothing but wonderment at why the filmmakers would employ such a thing so redundantly. Technical highs and lows aside, the film works with its two leads, holding off their meeting for as long as possible. This adds to the sense that the film exists solely to pair these two, playing off their respective career successes. Such careers, it must be noted, have come from a certain prowess in acting, and this is on full display here. Reno and Cassel play off each other well, Reno playing the straight man to Cassel's more comical, less battle-hardened cop. Speaking of comedy, Kerkerian's two underlings are called upon to bear the majority of this, unsuccessfully so. Their humour is misplaced and ineffective, though not quite deleteriously so. The plot from which the mystery derives is a little baffling, Cassel himself having gone on record as saying he doesn't understand it. It's not entirely beyond the threshold of understandability, but the film doesn't exactly offer you much help in figuring out its every detail. Mentioned flaws aside, it's cracking good fun, truth be told. Cassel and Reno are a fine team, their unveiling of this puzzling mystery well effected. Don't expect to be blown away, moved to great thought or emotion, or motivated to lend much memory, but it's a perfectly fine way to spend one hundred minutes.A small number of narrative flaws, some misused technical tricks, and some poorly placed humour mar Les Rivières Pourpres to an extent, but not so much so that it doesn't remain enjoyable. A nice fight sequence early on and some functional cinematographic flair are to be admired, certainly, giving the film a nice look to go with its decent entertainment value.

truehorrorfan People can comment on camera work, imagery, and acting quality of a film, but all of that does not matter if the writing is...well...crap. Perhaps something was lost in translation here but the film had so many plot holes that bowling balls would fall through it. I wont explain specifics to avoid spoilers but by the time the facts, twists, and the killer was revealed I just didn't care. It was not "Oh my god," but "Ok, sure, whatever." This was due to a poor story development which meanders and looses it's audience, not to mention poor pacing which made it quite anti-climatic.I gave it a five out of 10 because the story had potential, however it was told poorly, acting and imagery aside.One last rant: What was the deal with the transplanted fight scene in the "paintball club?" The choreography there was terrible and did not look real. It appeared to be a feeble attempt at making it seem like an action movie.I know that the french can do better than that, considering "high tension", and "frontiers" to name a few.

Graham Greene The best detective stories allow their central arc of enigmatic mystery to unravel slowly, leaving behind a trail of clues for the audience to follow. Therefore, it is important when adapting the story to a medium such as film that the clues aren't signalled too early, giving the audience the chance to search in the dark with only a few subtle elements of light to work with. It is also important that the film and its various strands of character, theme and narrative all eventually lead to the same place, confounding but also confirming what the viewer had expected all along.The Crimson Rivers (2000) by La Haine (1995) director Mathieu Kassovitz sticks to this method fairly closely for the most part; giving us the usual archetypes familiar from this kind of heavily investigatory detective fiction alongside the usual contemporary preoccupations with dark, gloomy, atmospheric visuals and intriguing, idiosyncratic characters. It is also refreshing to see a director intelligent enough to allow the film's location to become the centre of their story; framing his scenes so that the ominous presence of the towering French Alps casts a foreboding and omnipotent shadow across these characters and the story itself to perfectly set up a certain sense of the foreshadowing of later, thematic events. As the Alps hold a serious significance over the direction the narrative will take, Kassovitz understandably exploits the set up perfectly; using forced perspectives to give the impression of the characters gradually being surrounded, even asphyxiated by the landscape, to create a more potent feeling of suffocating claustrophobia.The idea of claustrophobia is mirrored by the interior production design, which dwarfs our protagonists against low ceilings cracked with damp, drab, monochromatic tones and deeper shades of autumn, and stark, naturalistic lighting with plenty of shadows. These visuals complement the narrative beautifully, going beyond the obvious and somewhat lazy comparisons to David Fincher's classic detective thriller Se7en (1996) to create a style and atmosphere that seems just right for this kind of twisted, slow-building set up. The story is admittedly fairly well worn, with two seemingly mismatched cops thrown together in the pursuit of a vicious serial killer and slowly developing a strong bond as their lives and rank are thrown into jeopardy and confusion. So essentially we're dealing with the typical buddy-cop clichés, though with more believability and less reliance on comic relief, with any real attempt at humour usually undercut by the explicitness of the violence and that fantastic air of dark, disturbing dread.The central performances from Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel are both very good, with Reno portraying the older, wiser, more intuitive detective paired off with Cassel's headstrong loose cannon. Combined with that fantastic build up of slow burning tension, the intricacies of the plot and the thick air of pure atmospheric dread, we should be looking at a standout, A+, modern-day crime thriller. Unfortunately, the last ten minutes of the film suffer from a serious drop off, creating a dénouement worthy of the worst kind of late night B-movie or TV thriller. It's a real shame too, with the first hour of the film creating such a searing and enigmatic sense of mystery that really draws us, in before the pieces of the puzzle are blown away by a bizarre climax that stretches plausibility beyond breaking point. As a result, the ending seems like an anachronism within the film's post-modern framework; offering us all the answers presented at once in a manner that seems incredibly lazy and unfair given the great sense of mystery that was previously unfolding.In this respect, I would draw comparisons to two of the most recent films by Italian horror/thriller director Dario Argento, in particular Sleepless (2000) and The Card Player (2004). Both of these films feature a great first half rife with mystery and suspense, but loose it in the final act with a complete disregard for logic, character or the thrill of expectation. In similar fashion, the first hour of The Crimson Rivers is excellent; great style, great characters and a story that pulls us in. Unfortunately, the pace cannot be maintained and the end of the film will no doubt leave many viewers angry, confused and severely disappointed.