i tried.

to like "see how they fall" (2004). i did. but after, i thought back on two of jacques audriard's other films that i actually enjoyed -- "the beat that my heart skipped" and "read my lips" -- and was reminded that they both had a little too much unevenness to make them really balanced films. and this film was even more so.

simon, played by the always disconcerting jean yanne, is a business card salesman whose friend mickey, a policeman, is shot and subsequently is brain-dead. simon goes off the rails, and sets out to find mickey's killers, who turn out to be marx and johnny, played by jean-louis trintignant and matthieu kassovitz. i will go ahead and confess that i mostly watched this movie because of kassovitz -- i've had a hard time bringing myself to watch his latest directorial efforts, which have seriously slid since the brilliant 'la haine' and 'metisse', but you're usually safe with him as an actor. marx is a crippled crook, and johnny seems to have the iq of a dim-witted five-year-old. he's the type that should never see the outside of a mental institution. there's a healthy dose of police brutality, and homosexual overtones that build throughout the film. simon loses more and more of himself as he gets closer to finding the guilty parties.

the film looks good, i'll give it that, shot in the shadowy, grainy tones of a gritty american crime film from the 70s. at the beginning of the film, there are a few random moments of narration and title cards, which are, at best, distracting, and at worst, pointless. the range of crooked character, from slightly to outrageously skeevy, are not well-defined enough to make anyone but the main characters stand out. simon's progression from meek, successful, married salesman to vengeful, homosexual, car-battery-torturing psychopath is not believable. it's not that the story was bad, it's just that there didn't seem to be enough to merit an entire film. sort of regret not turning this one off before the end.