French writer-director Alexandre Arcady continues his saga of Algerian French-Jewish crime family the Bettouns in this well-mounted and stylish sequel to his 1982 LE GRAND PARDON.
A voice-over informs us that mob king Raymond Bettoun (Roger Hanin) has spent the last ten years in a Paris prison after "turning himself in to the authorities for avenging his family's honor by killing a sworn enemy on a high Jewish holiday." Now the ageing patriarch joins his son Maurice
(Richard Berry) in Miami, on the occasion of his grandson's lavish bar mitzvah. Maurice has have found wealth and social standing as a banker, although he's involved in rackets and laundering drug money. His latest scheme is to build a swank hotel-casino in the Caribbean, and to help finance this
$100-million venture, Maurice offers local drug lord Pasco Meisner (Christopher Walken) a one-ton shipment of cocaine, then sends Lemondier (Jean-Francois Stevenin), a trusted friend, to the only men who can get such a huge shipment into Miami, the retired drug smuggler Indian (Gerard Darmon) and
his cohort Jean (Christian Fellat). The plan succeeds, but Lemondier discovers that Indian is actually Maurice's older brother Roland Bettoun, whom Maurice believed was a traitor and killed (so he thought) years before. Jean kills Lemondier, and Roland's son Eli Bettoun (Philippe Sfez)--to help
his father's sworn revenge against Maurice--turns Maurice in to the police for the murder.
With the drugs in Miami, undelivered, Pasco kidnaps Maurice, and Raymond engineers a plot to free him. Eli kills himself at Raymond's feet in remorse for his lies. Roland decides to join his father's attack on Pasco's compound and reconciles with the understandably shocked Maurice, who is shot
by Pasco. Roland drives the drugs-laden truck to Pasco's door and explodes it, killing himself. In the ensuing battle, Pasco is blown away by Raymond's forces. The fade out finds Raymond musing at Maurice's grave site that "God's clock is not set like ours is."
Throughout this central story are woven various subplots, including the Bettouns' problems with Hispanic drug seller Emilio (Raul Davila) and his son; Maurice's relationship with live-in girlfriend Joyce (Jennifer Beals), who's working undercover for the DEA; and Raymond's meeting and bedding
Sally White (Jill Clayburgh), whose modest hotel the Bettouns have been trying to buy and raze. Like DAY OF ATONEMENT, Arcady's LE GRAND PARDON--a huge French box-office success, since telecast annually on French TV--has never been theatrically distributed in the US. Although portions of it appear
as flashbacks in ATONEMENT, the characters and their motivations--including the entire central revenge plot--are a bit confusing in the sequel. The films' immediate, and sometimes limiting, influences are the GODFATHER movies, even to Arcady's devoting the first half-hour to the bar mitzvah party,
an elaborate sequence that, like THE GODFATHER's wedding reception, establishes the many characters and, juxtaposed with a violent drug bust, sets the plot in motion. And, like the Corleones, as Raymond intones, "There are more graves than cradles in the Bettoun family."
Although Arcady paces the film smartly and neatly choreographs the sharp bursts of violence, there is a certain illogic in the story-telling, and a bit of murkiness to the narrative, with its huge array of characters and subplots, perhaps because the movie lost some 20 minutes for its US video
release. Arcady and co-screenwriter Daniel Saint-Hamont do capture some of the heavy existentialism that the New Wave filmmakers forever added to the French crime film from their post-war discovery of '40s American B pictures, but much of the tortuous inter-family squabbling and relationships in
ATONEMENT seems emotionally thin. However, the movie is well-acted and benefits from the original-film cast members Hanin, Berry, and Darmon repeating their roles these ten years later. The magnificently ageing Hanin is particularly good--when Maurice is kidnapped and Hanin plots his rescue and
revenge, the years drop away, and it's as if Hanin were once again tough-guy stalking through his 1950s prime. Playing a Chilean whose father was an exiled German Nazi, Walken adds another juicy sadistic-villain stint to his canon. Despite conspicuous billing, the other American stars, Beals and
Clayburgh, have little to do. Arcady's own son Alexander plays Maurice's son, the bar mitzvah boy; as an infant he appeared in PARDON's circumcision rites.
Made by Arcady's production company and financed solely with French money, ATONEMENT is well-produced, smoothly designed by Tony Egry and gorgeously photographed by Willy Kurant entirely in Miami, Miami Beach, and Dade County. Made mostly in English (although a few actors, like Stevenin, appear
to be dubbed), ATONEMENT was shot in widescreen, which has unfortunately been roughly panned-and-scanned for its US video release. (Violence, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
