ANTHONY ZIMMER: DVD

SYNOPSIS:
French money launderer Anthony Zimmer is hunted by police as well as the Russian mafia, but after plastic surgery, he is impossible to find. Except through his mistress, Chiara (Sophie Marceau). Heading for Cannes by train, Chiara picks up the nerdy, recently dumped Francois (Yvan Attal), seducing him to change his boring plans for her more interesting offer. The pursuing mafia believe they have found their man as Francois has to evade them as well as the police.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
This is writer/director Jerome Salle's thrilling debut feature, and earned a nomination as Best First Feature at the 2006 Cesar Awards. Yvan Attal stars as the recently divorced, unremarkable Francois, a man set up to be a decoy by the money laundering Anthony Zimmer, who is on the run from police. This fine Israeli actor had a support role in Steven Spielberg's Munich, starring Eric Bana. He also worked with Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter. Here, he make a great leading man.

Sophie Marceau, who plays Chiara, the gorgeous femme fatale sent in to trap Zimmer, is a French favourite, and has been for 25 years, after her debut as a teenager in La Boum and La Boum 2 - the latter earning her a Cesar award as best newcomer. She promptly bought back her contract from the Gaumont studio for a million francs - and she was just 16 at the time. Her father was a truck driver, and Sophie herself obviously knows how to drive a hard bargain. She has since appeared in films as varied as Braveheart and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Anna Karenina and the James Bond adventure, The World is Not Enough.

These two stars make this thriller fully engaging and the locations are a great bonus. A good, strong story with a final twist is well told, and the tension never lets up.

Published July 31, 2008