Vụ Án Mất Tích

There are some movies you watch to learn something, and some you watch to be entertained, and some you watch for both purposes.

This is a pure entertainment movie, and I liked it a lot. The most important things in a movie like this are to have a plot that twists and turns but remains at least semi-plausible, to have a reasonably attractive hero, a super-sexy femme fatale and appropriately menacing villains, and above all to keep up the pace no matter what. Anthony Zimmer does all of these things rather well. Throw in the bonus of lots of the high life -- the mountain-top super-house, the suite at the Carlton in Nice and all the rest -- and the extra bonus of a happy ending (I don't think that's a spoiler) and you make a very enjoyable evening out.

Don't bother trying to work out later how all the bits fitted together. Some of them don't fit all that well, but then they never do in films like this, and it's not the point. They fit together well enough while you're watching it.

I saw this at the annual festival of French films put on by the Alliance Française in Melbourne, Australia. It opened the Festival, and later was shown again at a multiplex. The later showing was originally supposed to be in one 250-seat cinema, but demand was so great that it eventually was shown in three 250-seaters simultaneously, all of which were completely full. We all went home happy.