I haven't read the novel by Donald E. Westlake on which this movie is based but I have read several of his works and til now I never had him pegged as a plagiarist but here he's at it twice over; firstly he lifts a title, Ax, already used by Ed McBain in one of his 87th Precinct novels and then the plot itself is pure Richard The Third, or - and new readers start here - the one about the guy who kills everybody standing between him and the throne. In this case the throne is just a middle management job at Arcadia, a paper manufacturer and it was a job that Jose Garcia HAD til he was laid off. Like a lot of people in similar circumstances - he is after all a chemist as opposed to a common or garden administrator - he figures it's only a matter of time til he lucks into another job but after three years of no money, a wife, Karin Viard, and two kids to support and a house to keep up he figures the only way through the wood is, to paraphrase Richard Crookback, 'hack my way out with a bloody axe. This is where Costa-Gavros lost me; it may be he was aiming at comedy and/or satire but if he was he missed by a mile. I mean this guy kills his rivals in broad daylight; he uses his own car which SOMEBODY must have seen, his own gun, time after time even on one occasion accidentally killing a neighbour who had already seen him on a previous abortive attempt on the guy in question and now accosted him. Don't they watch CSI Miami in France? I mean have they ever heard of forensic evidence? This guy just kills and kills and walks, or rather drives away. There's even a weird sequence when he breaks into the home of the head honcho of Arcadia (Olivier Gourmet) who braces him. Gourmet is slightly drunk however and winds up entertaining Garcia before passing out. Garcia's idea of fun is to turn on the gas and leave the comatose Gourmet to inhale it; as luck would have it Gourmet comes to, fails to notice the gas and lights a cigarette, end of one head honcho. Garcia I can take or leave and his performance does nothing to change my mind but I am partial to Karin Viard who is wasted here yet does what she can to salvage a bad joke. 3 stars.
Review of The Ax
