La mort d'un tueur

Robert Hossein (who also directs) stars as Pierre Massa, an ex-con just released from prison after serving five years for armed robbery. He hooks up with a couple of former gang members and together they try to find out who betrayed him to the cops a half-decade ago. Massa's convinced it was his former best friend who's since shacked up with the ex-con's sister but the couple insist it isn't so -and while Massa's been following his former buddy, someone's been shadowing him...

Risk-taking Robert Hossein's strange and stylized crime thriller is structured along the lines of Robert Siodmak's CRISS CROSS with its voice-over narration and flashbacks to an armored car robbery gone wrong. The excellent use of Paris (?) locations gradually takes a back seat to the increasingly surreal goings on once Massa meets his sister's doppleganger (Marie-France Pisier in a dual role) and has sex with her. It's a nihilistic noir that aspires to the poetic and although the film doesn't quite succeed on that level, it's involving, nonetheless. Hossein's dad André composed the jazzy score.