Arizona Reporter - Movie Reviews - 23/01
Sundance: 7 DAYS (Les 7 jours du talion)


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There's an epidemic going around during past couple of months. People are killing young women-in the movies. In Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones," 14-year-old Susie Salmon played by Saoirse Ronan is raped and murdered near her home. The dead girl is intent on killing the murderer, whose death would release her from the clouds and gain her entrance to heaven. In Pierre Morel's "Taken," Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson, suffers the murder of his daughter. His response? "I know who you are. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not lok for you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." Martin Campbell's "Edge of Darkness" finds Thomas Craven in pursuit of the shotgun slaying of his 24-year-old daughter. Forget the law. Justice is too slow. These survivors want revenge. Whether or not we, the theatergoers, believe that they are doing the right thing by taking the law into their own hands, tales of retaliation have a way of riveting us to our seats, if they are well done.


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7 Days (Les 7 jours du talion)

IFC Films/ Sundance Selects
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten, NYFCO
Grade: B+
Directed by: Daniel Grou
Written By: Patrick Senécal, from his novel
Cast: Rémy Girard, Claude Legault, Fanny Mallette, Martin Dubreiul, Rose-Marie Coalier, Pascale Delhaes, Pascal Anctil
Screened at: Critics' DVD, NYC
Opens: January 22, 2010 (at Sundance)

"7 Days," or "Les 7 jours du talion" as it is known in its native Quebec, is such a well-done picture. It's the closest thing the movie industry has produced to torture porn in recent times, the right stuff for our entertainment. Bruno Hamel (Claude Legault), the principal character in Daniel Grou's film, written by Patrick Senécal from his novel, is known to his public as a kind, gentle doctor. His personality undergoes some change when the body of his 8-year-old daughter, Jasmine (Rose-Marie Coallier), is discovered. The killer, Anthony Lemaire (Martin Dubreuil) has been arrested thanks to a DNA match from his semen and stands to go to jail for 15-25 years. But that's not enough of a punishment for the doc, in the throes of grief, as the death of a child is among the leading causes of intense stress as measured by the Holmes and Rahe scale.

At least half the film deals with the reaction at home, as the doc's wife, Sylvie (Fanny Mallette), grieves but is determined to wipe the event from her mind, while the leading police detective, Hervé Mercure (Rémy Girard), is determined to bring the killer to justice the legal way. Going the legal route is no fun for the audience, though, so the other half of the picture shows a silent Dr. Hamel, who has managed to get the killer kidnapped from a police van, into a deserted cottage by a lake, there to inflict torture for seven days after which time he will liquidate his prey.

Claude Legault turns in an impressive role, a credible one, of a respected, calm surgeon who goes literally insane with grief. The torture he slowly and methodically inflicts on his victim, who at first denies the crime and later seems to brag about it perhaps to hasten his own death, is graphic. Curare, a drug that paralyzes the motor sense while leaving the victim conscious, is put to delightful use, while scalpels, ropes, chains, cuffs and the like allow the doctor to do as he wishes with the moaning, yelling, cursing sex predator-played quite well by Martin Dubreuil.

Remember the principal pledge by doctors, "Prinum non nocere" (first do no harm)? Must have slipped Dr. Hamel's mind. Before hitting the commercial theaters, "7 Days," which is filmed by Bernard Couture in black-and-white with a sickly-green patina, opened January 22 at a Sundance Festival's midnight show. If you liked any of the "Saw" series, "The Devil's Rejects," "Wolf Creek," or even "The Passion of the Christ," you'll dig this picture.

7 Days (Les 7 jours du talion) IFC Films/ Sundance Selects
Unrated. 110 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Sundance Film Festival, Film Reviews, Movie Reviews



© 2010 Arizona Reporter (reproduction prohibited)
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