Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Mathieu Kassovitz
Cast
Jean Reno,
Vincent Cassel,
Nadia Farès,
Dominique Sanda,
Karim Belkhadra,
Jean-Pierre Cassel
Genre
Crime,
Mystery,
Thriller
Two French policemen, one investigating a grisly murder at a remote mountain college, the other working on the desecration of a young girl's grave by skinheads, are brought together by the clues from their respective cases. Soon after they start working together, more murders are committed, and the pair begin to discover just what dark secrets are behind the killings.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
A breathtaking exercise in the macabre, a gruesome thriller with quirky cops and a killer of Lecterian complexity, and even when the movie is perfect nonsense, it's so voluptuous that you're grateful to be watching it anyway.
Boston Globe by Jay Carr
The Crimson Rivers could teach many an American thriller a thing or two about sophisticated creepiness.
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
More amiably mindless summer distraction than just about anything Hollywood has to offer this season.
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Never lacks for energy, and the director and his stars stride with focused confidence through the hooey.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
For most of its running time, this lunatic euro-thriller is creepy, stylish and occasionally suspenseful.
Variety
Adequately entertaining but not particularly memorable.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
Two things make this film slightly more interesting than its American B-movie equivalents. There's the artless way it shows the French state exercising its power and the charisma of French stars.
L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor
Never lets up: A door can't shut without sounding like a bomb going off; mutilated bodies show up with clockwork punctuality, gratuitously underscored by a relentlessly overbearing soundtrack.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Makes you gag.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Not even the strong, reflective, world-weary presence of Reno or Cassel's energy can make a dent in a movie in which suspense and tension dissipate quickly, with action sequences not spectacular enough to compensate. All that's left is gratuitous gore.
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