This is something of a hybrid inasmuch as it is based on real events that happened thirty years ago and the perpetrator is still very much alive and incarcerated in a secure psychiatric unit. What is never made really clear is why a gendarme would suddenly begin killing young girls at random, initially running them down and later picking them up as hitch-hikers, shooting them and dumping them by the roadside. There is no attempt at sexual molestation, the killing itself seems to provide sufficient satisfaction. It is not surprising that Guillaume Canet elected to play the lead. This fine actor/director can take his pick of leading roles but, not unlike Isabelle Huppert, he has a penchant for the offbeat and unusual and once again he delivers a compelling performance. As an added twist the murderer is a gendarme, a French title not unlike special Constable in England. As the murders take place in the area in which he works he is, in effect, investigating his own crimes - Yves Montand of course did much the same thing in Police Python 357 but that was a fictional situation whilst this is very real. Not perhaps everyone's cup if The but the central performance is well worth seeing.
