ON THE RUN (CAVALE)
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten Grade: A- Magnolia Pictures Directed by: Lucas Belvaux Written by: Lucas Belvaux Cast: Catherine Frot, Lucas Belvaux, Dominique Blanc, Ornella Muti, Gilbert Melki, Patrick Descamps Screened at: Tribeca Grand Hotel, NYC, 6/24/03
When Eric Rudolph, who allegedly detonated a bomb at the 1996 Atlantic Olypmics, killed an abortion doctor and blasted a gay nightclub in Birmingham, was arrested by Murphy, North Carolina cop Jeffrey Postell, Rudolph who had been in hiding for five years said he was relieved. We assume that he's not relieved about going to jail for the rest of his life but that he was worn out from being on the run for a long period of time. Rudolph was helped by rednecks in his home town who said they would never turn in "one of our own." If "On the Run," the first part of a trilogy of films by the handsome and talented Lucas Belvaux, were released during the week of Rudolph's capture, the audience would quickly see how the movie could have been torn from today's headlines. Few films in recent memory do a better job of giving us insight into the life of a person who is being chased by the authorities and who, like Rudolph, is helped (or not) by people who owe him.
That's not all: by analogy we also discover why some people in Cherokee County, N.C. were reluctant to give Rudolph up to the authorities. Belvaux is skilled enough both as a performer and as the writer-director to make us in the audience care for a fellow who had killed three ordinary working people as collateral damage from blowing up a government office. Why should we care for Lucas Belvaux? I'd say principally because he's not the kind of guy who would abandon his friends, people he worked with during a failed series of far-left terrorist attacks in France; nor would he stand by and allow a hapless woman get beaten by her drug dealer or permit the woman to die of an overdose of the morphine she depends on so dearly.
What makes Belvaux' film stand out above most Hollywood fare that would treat the subject is its downplay of melodramatic moments. The music is unobtrusive and pertinent. More important, the acting is deliberately underplayed while the violence is not of the in-your-face kind. Nor does any gunman waste time jabbering so much that the victim gets the drop on him. How unlike so much that Hollywood produces with that flaw, most recently "Charlie's Angels 2," in which Demi Moore as villain could have done away with all three angels had she not been careless with her mouth.
In "On the Run" Bruno Le Roux (Lucas Belvaux) has just escaped from jail fifteen years before his sentence for murder and revolutionary activities would have been completed. He races from the prison, is picked up by a friend, and in a long sequence filmed without dialogue re-establishes himself in a hideaway where he practices taking apart and putting together his firearms. Here's a guy who knows the score: life on the run is no picnic. While he prepares to settle a score with his enemies, his life is circumscribed by relationships with two woman. One, Jeanne Rivet (Catherine Frot), was a co- revolutionary years back but has now given up the cause to Bruno's lament. "There are no masses," she insists when the still-fervent radical tells her that the bosses must be killed and offices of the government blown up. The other woman, Agnes Manise (Dominique Blanc), is a drug addict who is desperate for a fix but finds getting the product difficult because few people will sell to the wife of a cop. Blanc does a stunning job of simulating an addict suffering the pangs of withdrawal, a scene that should be shown in every high school and middle school in the U.S.
As Bruno moves from safe houses (filmed in Grenoble) to the isolated and snow-packed alpine surroundings, we in our seats cannot be blamed for cheering him on as we feel the bitter winds on our own cheeks. Despite the existence in the West today of downtrodden citizens, many declared redundant in our global economy, there's not much sympathy for the ideas he continues to hold. Bruno learns the hard way that la guerre est finie.
If "On the Run" can be enjoyed separately from the other members of the trilogy, one can only imagine how fine would be the experience of encountering all. While "An Amazing Couple" and "After the Life" are only peripherally related to "On the Run," Belvaux uses the same performers in different genres. Where "On the Run" is a noir thriller with political overtones, "An Amazing Couple" is a light romance (which promises not to be of the "Maid in Manhattan" sort of fluff) and "After the Life" is a melodrama that focuses on the cop who captures escaped convict Bruno.
Not Rated. 117 minutes. (C) 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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