The Last Deadly Mission

Superintendent Louis Schneider works homicide in Marseille and is finished by drink. His wife was paralysed in an accident and he sleeps every night with the same dead. He has two matters in hand: the parole of a man who killed an entire family years ago, and new killings continuing in the city. At the same time Justine, the daughter who survived that family, is trying to stop the release. The film gives almost no room to solving a case; what interests it is what the job does to a person. Schneider's collapse is not a subplot but the film itself, and the last section offers no consolation. Olivier Marchal directed. Daniel Auteuil plays Schneider and Olivia Bonamy plays Justine. Marchal brings his own past into it: before directing he spent twelve years as a policeman, in the Paris force, in anti-terrorism and in the Versailles serious crime squad. The title is a weapon: the Manurhin MR 73, the revolver used by French police before they moved to the Sig Sauer. Who it is for: anyone who likes dark French crime films and portraits of burnt-out characters. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope. The film is bleak throughout, suicide and alcoholism are shown directly, and the two strands never quite fit together.