CALIBRE 9 (Anchor Bay, 2011) D: Jean-Christian Tassy, w/ Laurent Collombert, Nathalie Hauwelle. Rating: NNN DVD package: none Rating: NNN
There’s a genuine sense of rage behind Calibre 9 that you don’t usually find in actioners. You can see it in the public response to the villain’s ultimate demise, in the random slaughter of bystanders during the final pursuit and, above all, in the passivity of the nominal hero.
A Senegalese sorcerer infuses the spirit of a dying hooker (Nathalie Hauwelle) into the gun that killed her. An embittered cop slips it to Yann (Laurent Collombert), an insipid city planner who meets a developer to swap permits for cash on behalf of the corrupt, sadistic mayor. That’s when the gun leaps into his hand, the spirit takes control and the shooting starts.
Collombert makes Yann a depressed nobody. When the action starts, he’s bewildered and terrified, completely at the mercy of the spirit, who jerks him around like a puppet. Hauwelle gives Sarah, the spirit, a glee that occasionally borders on the demented. They make a good comic couple.
Chunks of Calibre 9 are heavily processed, with ghost images, flash cuts, shaking camera and all the other tricks that no-budget filmmakers employ to cover production flaws. Here, they’re well used to convey Yann’s disorientation and the overall sense of rage.
Too bad there’s no director interview. I’d like to know what prompted this project.
EXTRAS French audio. English subtitles.
movies@nowtoronto.com
