User Reviews

Directed by ex-cop Olivier Marchal as the concluding part of the trilogy he started with the critically acclaimed GANGSTERS and 36 QUAI DES ORFEVRES, this promised to be an inside look at the French police system. At least, that's all I knew when I entered the theater, lured in by the presence of the ever dependable Daniel Auteuil who may have compiled the most impressive body of work this side of Depardieu. Had I known beforehand just how relentlessly downbeat a cinematic experience this was going to be, it might have scared me off and that would have been very much my loss…

Set in the coastal town of Marseilles, made to look extremely uninviting by the bleached out cinematography of Denis Rouden (a master of atmosphere, as evidenced by his sterling work on Lionel Delplanque's PROMENONS-NOUS DANS LES BOIS and Olivier Megaton's LA SIRENE ROUGE), the narrative incorporates two serial killers – one past, one present – and their influence on weary, dead-eyed cop Louis Schneider in charge (initially, at least) of both cases. Those expecting a Continental carbon copy of SE7EN however will be disappointed (additional comments prove as much) as this is basically background for Schneider's road to redemption. Careful viewer attention is mandatory to grasp matters that have occurred in the past – sometimes only visually alluded to rather than spelled out in dialog – and how they not so much influence as downright paralyze the character in the present. Suffice it to say that a furtive fling with co-worker Marie (a subtle portrayal by the hauntingly beautiful Catherine Marchal, hereto best known for extensive TV work) at the exact same time his wife crashed her car on the freeway, reducing her to vegetable and killing their only child, provided him with enough guilt for at least three lifetimes. While his reprehensible and morally corrupt superior Kovalski, played with hiss-able relish by Francis Renaud, works hard to take Schneider of the current murder case, an unwelcome blast from the past will put everything into perspective. After 25 years of incarceration, psychopath Charles Subra (craggy-faced Philippe Nahon in his best performance since Gaspar Noë's SEUL CONTRE TOUS) is about to be released on good behavior, upsetting troubled bartender Justine (gorgeous Olivia Bonamy, unforgettable in the out of left field horror hit ILS, who continues to impress more with each passing film) whose parents he slaughtered before her very eyes. Requiring Schneider's help in bringing the seemingly reformed murderer (who has "found God") to justice, she unwittingly helps pave the way for the demon-plagued policeman to make his peace with the past. Fundamentally decent, he eventually summons up the courage to do the right things, even as rampant corruption and random violence threaten to obliterate his valiant efforts.

With human kindness in such short supply, Marchal still allows for a single ray of hope to shine through at film's end. The fact that he accomplishes this through possibly the most hackneyed of narrative devices (the birth of a baby) and yet manages not to make it come off as such attests to his considerable talents as both filmmaker and story-teller as well as the profound emotional investment audiences have established by then with these emotionally battered characters. The exquisitely elegiac soundtrack by Bruno Coulais, who has clearly been going from strength to strength, beautifully complements the human and religious connotations the movie has built towards. Viewers who complained about the perfunctory exposition in both murder cases actually managed to miss the point the director has gone to such great lengths to make, that even the most adverse of situations can serve to bring out the best in people if this is within their nature, ofttimes unbeknown to even themselves. Though on the surface as noir as noir can be, this may ultimately prove an optimist opus at heart. Just brace yourself passing through. There is light at tunnel's end

Olivier Marchal kept his devotees waiting for four years after the great 36, Quai des Orfevres so clearly the main question is, was MR 73 worth the wait. The answer has to be yes. There are, inevitably, overtones from other movies; the detective searching for a serial killer whilst his own wife remains comatose is straight out of The First Deadly Sin in which Sinatra was the cop and Faye Dunaway the comatose wife. Elsewhere we are on newer ground. Where Sinatra's wife had a conventional illness Auteuil's was in a car crash for which he feels such guilt that he is burnt-out, washed-up and a booze hound. Marchal weaves two stories seamlessly - the current serial killer and the one awaiting release from prison, whilst his own wife, Catherine scores heavily as Auteuil's sympathetic boss. Try not to miss it

I was really thrilled by "36 Quai Des Orfèvres" (aka Department 36) ... for once you could feel a real policeman tale by an ex-cop. I am slightly disgusted by MR 73. I agree with the first comments I read on IMDb. The film is bleak, spooky, desperate and after the introductory minutes no one wants to laugh anymore. What's more, the ideology under the images is debatable to say the least. Criminals stay criminals whatever the amount of redeeming they show off.If they're given a conditional release after 20 years of prison, kill them before they can commit a new murder ! Good cops stay good cops, whatever the amount of drinking and "petty demeanors" such as high-jacking a bus for example they can be responsible of. Auteuil plays an ex-good cop: he drinks like a fish, high-jacks a bus to get back home with his policeman gun and is retrograded as a heavy sentence to another service of Marseille's police ! he steals crucial evidences, acts as the local Zorro with a fellow policeman who finds death in the process in company of the serial killer ... and he's given the retirement sack (with 70 % of wages)...only because the criminal himself (credibility rebuke)happens to be the son of a high rank officer of the Police. In what Republic are we supposed to live ? This film is certainly not a defense and illustration of the glorious french police corp, rather the contrary. I give a 7 though, for the quality of filming and interpretation.

First of all: I didn't really like this movie, and I wanted to.

Daniel Auteuil, the genre, a serial... But no, when I saw the clichés piling up it reminded me of another French tank policier which turned out to be pulp... yes, "36 Quai des Orfebrès". Luckily I hadn't found out on IMDb that they were issued by the same director. If "real life cop experience" makes you put a wife left in coma from "an accident", a child victim from a family murderer, who cries all the time (sometimes flooding) is herself a victim of a bad job, bad relationships with her boyfriend and sister, wait until you see his grandfather die (she sobs again), all her pregnancy, including two stressful events, then childbearing, on camera, long shots of her sweating, then the child's face on camera... What does it have to do with the story? Do we need this to elicit some automatic empathy for any character? If we want to watch a silly sick movie like "Mr. Holland's Opus", which can only resort to low blows because it has nothing to say, go ahead. But this film could have been good. It should have been great.

It's a pity, Marchal's got a great CV as an actor (!) as well as a writer and director. I just don't like his way of "emotional blackmail", that the Argentine writer J. L. Borges wrote about 50 years ago. He liked the genre, I suspect he wouldn't like this tergiversation.

I've just learned this is the last part of a trilogy, starting with "Gangsers" (2002), then followed by 36 Quai des Orfèvres (nothing to do with the 1947 movie, that was way more daring for its age). Any of the 3 has actors that would make any budding director dream: grouchy Gérard, André Dussollier, Anne Parillaud, Francis Renaud and Olivia Bonamy here. He is very believable (something of Madeleine R. IMDb readers?) . She could make a rock weep. Here she is given such lame material that it only hints at what she could do. Like the "motive" for her to want to track Charles Subra. "Ask him if he had changed". Come' on...! He killed her family, but did his time (= in jail) as a law abiding citizen, but now he's free, we secretly want him killed, and so does she. If not, why ask him with a dishonest kiss to "find him"? If everybody knows he's a loose cannon? But she's got to remain "purely good". Then, she's got to babble something ludicrous as her leitmotif? The problem is that it's the core of this bad movie. Ah, the cliché of "the woman who could be his daughter that puts some order and romance into a loner looser with addiction(s) isn't something you've seen a million times? Again, superb IMDb community of reviewers, help me out with names commenting this review, in your own, add a thread or something.

I just don't want to write this review. The only scene I liked was the predictable dog accident with his sidekick. Schneider seems really angry, like if nothing he does could ever turn right. Auteuil has to overact all his other "anger scenes" so as to carry on with this boring film. Like the "botched And at the morgue" scene, the fight with Kovalski, his constant drunkenness, etc. At Quai he's also got to endure jail, unfair condemnation even from his family, bereavement (sounds familiar :)?). Even the filming style here of the melodramatic scenes is the same. In fact, that's what made me think I had seen the same film before... it was Quai :(! Music is good when playing the obsessive tune Schneider gets on his head. Kovalski gets the best line, the good if not superb: "cops are like family, we don't betray each other" (to the fat forensic/ photographer, smuggler). Now that I think about it, I'm surprised he didn't wind up dead. I also liked Subra's pretence of redemption, totally feigned convincingly, so much he fools Kovalski. Which is not so surprising given he fits the profile of the classic psychopath. Emmanuel Carrière in the book that originated the infinitely better "L'Adversaire" (also starring Auteuil) narrates how the true case of a guy who murdered basically all his family, including parents and in laws, even almost got rid of her lover too, all during a long period (not in a fit or rage or something), later in jail converted to extreme religious zeal. Sounds familiar, right?

Catherine Marchal does a fine emphatic psychologist. Yes, she's smart and beautiful (her sleek attire and ultra stylish car does help), but doesn't she have the same surname as the director? Oh my.

I liked the lighting. All the whites are too white, blinding. "Saturating" or whatever is the jargon for that. I suppose it follows some esthetical motivation, all I can say is it added some mysticism sorely wanting in the film. What I mean is, photography is probably the best this movie has. Even Subra in jail, washing or being put back into prison make you feel trapped, like if you were really there, grey walls, into constant "greyness".

Watch this film, don't get me wrong. The ending is worth it. But don't harbour great expectations, and you won't be disappointed. Like most things in life, I guess :).

Cop who's lost his family deals with his demons as he investigates a series of murder/rapes and tries to help a young woman deal with the impending release of a killer who had her watch as he killed her parents.

Dark brooding nihilistic film that makes you feel unclean. (I wanted to take a shower about half way in) This film is all about mood at the cost of an involving plot. The film begins well as we meet the characters, then it falls into dullness as everyone wanders about not doing a great deal interesting before it picks up at the end in such a way that you wonder why it took over two hours to get to that point. I think my feelings at reaching at the end sum it all up best, "Thats it?" Apparently. Its an okay film in bits but the ending isn't worth the time to get there.

Do not go for seeing it if you're in the mood to commit suicide; there would be some work for the undertaker...

This movie would give neurasthenia to a young couple on his weeding day.

The tale of an alcoholic cop whose broken life has led him on the road to perdition. A cop whose the wife is nearly a zombie. A cop with no more friends, except one. A cop who is determined to neutralize, at all cost, a serial killer.

A cop who has nothing more to lose.

Olivier Marchall - ex cop - gives here a masterpiece. Daniel Auteuil is outstanding in the leading character.

It's an awful, terrific story, a nightmarish odyssey for a man on the way to hell.

It reminds me the Hughes Pagan's novels. Pagan is an ex cop himself and a friend of Olivier Marchall.

MR 73 torn me to pieces. I couldn't move a muscle after seeing it.

First I heard about this film in May and since then I was looking forward to release. And such a long expectation was has justified itself. If it is said about a film that it is made by the same director and with practically the same actors as the “36 Quai des Orfèvres” film, then it can be taken for granted that this particular film is worth watching. Usually it sounds like pure advertisement, but in the “MR 73” case the fact that the plot is based on a true story is one of the key factors of the perception of what is going on on the screen. For there are scenes of borderline cruelty and they are shot with extreme naturalism. Though I think such scenes are on their place, and if they had been excluded, it would have damaged the movie. The rate of violence is exactly of that level a spectator can expect from the police drama of such realistic focus. In case Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” is a novel without a hero, then “MR 73” can be called a film without a hero. Of course Schneider can account on certain sympathy, but as a whole his methods are inadmissible. I do understand his unwillingness to let Kovalski win laurels, but it is not a proper ground for showing hackles and putting at stake the safety of the city by violating the arrest procedure. After all, what is more important – to stop a maniac or to pay off old scores? Seeing the names of Daniel Auteuil and Olivier Marchal on a DVD box is a quality guarantee for me. Auteuil’s acting is magnificent as always. Schneider is a drastic transformation played brilliantly. Out of his partners I would distinguish Francis Renaud (Kovalski). He is actually not known well in Russia, but I can judge by two films - “MR 73” and “Gangsters” also directed by Olivier Marchal – if there is a need for a real bad, though “bad” is not exactly the word, probably an ugly, vicious and repulsive cop, then there is no better candidacy than Francis Renaud. A rare talent, a born talent I think to play scoundrels. Actually if I wanted, I might find fault with the screenplay. Say, it is not news that the criminal is being exposed by the parallel between homicides and the pets found near the crime scenes. It is rather easy to make a conclusion that a maniac is someone who has an access to these pets or who at least had an opportunity to see them. We have already seen this in “Red dragon”, but let us leave this far-fetched objection. The point is I am inclined to believe that what happens in “MR 73” took place in reality, so it has nothing to do with the imaginary events of Thomas Harris books. The pets that participated in the film, that is the puppy and the cat of enormous size are so sweet, but is has been said long before that if there are animal actors they will inevitably outshine the human ones. Those of “MR 73” were a real treat for spectators, especially the way Auteuil’s hero communicated with them. What the pets do is converting the gloomy atmosphere of the film into something a little bit less depressing.

With “36 Quai des Orfèvres” being my most favorite police drama, I could not but enjoy “MR 73”, and if you also like the previous Auteuil and Marchal common work, their new film will also find its place among your favorites.

From a cinematography point of view the film loses me a few times. We don't know what is going on at some points and some scenes are inexplicably there with no purpose.

Were it not for Daniel Auteuil I would give it a 0. He deserves an 8 if not just for going through with this sad excuse of a film. The other actors are so stiff it is cringe worthy.

Every cliche from American cop movies is repeated several times. There is so much cigarette smoking I had to open my windows while watching it.

The ending for me was a waste. There are 2 plots going on at same time. None come to a complete "denouement". This film takes on more than it can chew.

Stereotypical drunk cop protagonist. Except this one is REALLY REALLY drunk.

A lot of dark, beautiful scenes around Paris and decent yet generic dark crime dialog - this film starts getting questionable when the antagonist commits a murder while in jail after already serving a life sentence and just days after his parole hearing.

Yes, after a man is found hanging in a cell that he just basically randomly was placed into - he gets set free - and he just committed murder and rape about 20 years ago and has rape and other violent crimes on his record from previous cases and stints in jail.

Around the same time of the parole hearing the viewer is introduced into another "twist". What is it? Yes corruption in the police force. But this isn't with basic under-payed patrol cops - its with the elite special crimes unit in which the protagonist is a part of. This corruption isn't anything high brow and isn't even white collar crime - it's some fat guy crime scene photographer who steals jewelry off dead corpses and - get this - sells them to fellow special crime detectives on his police force.

This movie had potential (the first scene was pretty iconic) but then went nowhere for literally hours and had some unreal corny movie scenes that you might see in a movie from the 80's and then of coarse a goofy tedious plot which left me confused about the point of the movie.