Mr 73

“God’s a son of a bitch. Someday I’ll kill him.” When a hero utters these words within the first minute of a film you know things will end badly. Schneider is a Marseille detective on the trail of a serial killer. He has a tragic past, a taste for Jameson’s, and a fondness for cats. So far, so noir. At the same time a prisoner convicted of brutal killings nears his release. Has he found God, as he claims, or will he pursue the daughter of his final victims? MR 73, directed by Olivier Marchal, begins as an effective and stylish thriller in the Michael Mann mould, but one that lacks the gritty sense of locality that anchors and animates the best noir. As the two stories converge and events spin out of Schneider’s control, so Marchal’s grip on the plot slips until the film culminates in a spectacularly overwrought denouement.