This is a French thriller which was commercially very successful and won its share of critical acclaim as well. It felt very much like an American thriller to me, and no wonder, for it was adapted from an American novel of the same title, with the story transposed to France. While there’s some novelty in seeing a French film in this style and some excitement when the main character is on the run from the police, I did not much care for the film by its end. It’s just too overwritten with too many characters and the protagonist has so little agency that he’s seems more like an observer than a participant.

Eight years ago, Margot, the wife of pediatrician Alexandre Beck was killed in an attack that also left him unconscious. A serial killer was convicted for the murder but Alexandre has never gotten over the loss. The case is reopened when the corpses of two men are found near the site of the attack and Alexandre receives a mysterious email suggesting that Margot is still alive. The police call Alexandre in for questioning and show him photographs of Margot with her face badly beaten that they managed to obtain from clues left on the corpses. Alexandre tries to investigate Margot’s supposed death on his own, questioning her father who was the person who identified her corpse, trying to gain access to the autopsy records and meeting Margot’s best friend Charlotte to see if she knows anything. When Charlotte is subsequently murdered, Alexandre is naturally the prime suspect. As he is convinced that Margot is still alive, he chooses to run rather than let the police arrest him.

With the slick pacing, exciting chase scenes, twists and turns in the plot as a shadowy, powerful figure acts in the background, this feels every bit like an American thriller. There are some French touches, such as Alexandre getting help by a banlieu gangster who is indebted to him who are always up for sticking it to the cops, but one can immediately tell that this isn’t a French story. It’s interesting to watch this for a while but plot problems catch up soon enough. For one thing, there are too many characters and too many points of view in this film. The cinematic experience would have been far superior if the film confined itself to Alexandre’s perspective and his limited knowledge of what is really going on. Instead we have snippets of what the villains are doing and what the police are thinking, which drains all of the suspense as the audience knows far more than Alexandre. Similarly we don’t really need scenes like his lawyer confronting the prosecutor over evidence that he isn’t guilty or complications like the lawyer being hired by his sister’s rich lesbian partner. It’s just too much detail that doesn’t involve Alexandre directly.

A graver problem that only becomes apparent later on is that Alexandre isn’t much of a protagonist at all. Things happen to him and he reacts but he doesn’t proactively do much of anything. Everything that matters in this story happened eight years ago without Alexandre’s involvement and so he spends the whole film fumbling around until he finds someone who can tell him the truth. I think this sort of search for secrets long buried in the past might work alright in a novel but it’s very unsatisfying to watch a main character with so little agency in a film. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Margot really is alive but the stated reason for why she must be kept apart from Alexandre is just ridiculous. It’s also disappointing that she is a character that is kept in the background and we never get to know much about her even though she actually is a participant in the key events.

I think the source material does have some potential but this adaptation doesn’t do it justice at all. I suspect that a Hollywood version that is willing to streamline and cut things away while giving the protagonist a more active role would make for a much better film. As it is, I feel that the acclaim and the awards accorded to this film seems undeserved and was mainly because it is a relatively rare case of a French film trying rather hard to be an American one.