The theme of the cop or private eye whose approach to cases is obsessive to the point of psychosis is a potent one in that its subject is someone whose demand for justice goes beyond reasonable limits. The most obvious recent manifestation of this idea is the TV series Bosch, whose titular L.A. police detective is motivated in his job by the murder of his prostitute mother when he was a child. Every case he works is a veiled opportunity for payback, and, of course, the narrative subtext in the series is the possibility that he will someday get to the bottom of his mother’s killing. The protagonist of the Belgian film Maldoror comes from similar dramatic stock. The baby-faced Gendarmerie rookie Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon) is the child of an alcoholic prostitute (Beatrice Dalle) who grew up in a brothel and ran with a bad bunch while harboring an ambition to become a policeman for the purpose of helping the kind of marginal folks who are victimized by the system rather than saved by it. The case at hand is based on a real one from the 90s that went unsolved for years due to competitive infighting among three branches of law enforcement—the Gendarmerie, the local constabulary, and the judicial police. In fact, one of the fallouts from the real-life case was the disbandment of the Gendarmerie. Director Fabrice Du Welz doesn’t bother explaining these distinctions to those of us who are tourists so, in the beginning at least, the conflicts come across as gratuitous, but it’s clear that Paul’s status is low in the scheme of things.

As the movie begins two little girls have already gone missing and Paul tries to convince his superior (Laurent Lucas) that the Gendarmerie should take the case, a suggestion that’s mostly resented by his colleagues. Eventually, his superior relents and Paul and a sympathetic confederate launch a stakeout of suspects that cut into their other duties and extends after hours. At several points, Paul trespasses into other law enforcement organizations’ operations, thus causing internecine strife that comes down hard on him. He responds by doubling down and continuing the investigation on his own, and in the process forms the suspicion that the disappearances of other girls are all linked to a shadowy figure with friends in high places and a connection to a European pedophile ring. In the meantime, Paul has married into a lively Sicilian family whose own emotional reaction to the case—one of the missing girls is the daughter of a friend of his in-laws—spur him further into extralegal actions that only make his situation worse, especially in relation to his new wife (Gaia Bellugi). 

Since Du Welz is mainly known as a director of horror-adjacent cinema, some of the procedural stuff gets quite nasty. Sergi Lopez plays the nominal heavy with more subtlety than the role deserves, but he really comes into his own as a scary dude in the final half hour, when bodies show up and the stakes become extremely serious. Throughout, Du Welz makes often jokey references to famous crime movies and TV shows, and his somewhat lazy handling of development that could keep the viewer on edge tends to result in confusing plot points that are never cleared up. For sure, the movie is way too long and meanders aimlessly after the identity of the perpetrators is revealed, but Bajon is intense enough on his own to keep you watching because you know that Paul will get to the bottom of things. The question you need answered is: Will it be too far for him to come back?

The missing children that form the crux of the mystery in the weirdly original thriller Weapons pose a completely different sort of challenge to the authorities. All the members of one third grade class in a leafy Pennsylvania suburb leave their homes at the exact same time in the middle of the night and just disappear. Well, all except one, a boy named Alex (Cary Christopher) who can’t answer police questions about why he was the only classmate who didn’t participate in the mass exodus. However, the individual who gets the most attention is the class’s teacher, Ms. Gandy (Julia Garner), who the parents of the missing kids believe knows more than she’s saying. Predictably, she becomes the community pariah and thus the object of ugly rumors and vandalism. 

Director Zach Cregger, whose debut was the equally eccentric horror workout Barbarian, presents the development in chapter form, with the POV changing from one character to another, starting with the boozing Gandy and moving to her casual cop lover Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) and then to the father of one of the missing children, Graff (Josh Brolin), as well as a pilfering junkie (Austin Abrams), and finally the school principal (Benedict Wong) before settling into the story of what actually happened. Though the momentum of a compelling mystery is maintained through this round-robin structure, which is deepened by the well-plotted interrelationships among the main characters, Cregger mostly throws it away in the final act because, of course, the only way to explain what happened is with supernatural devices. And while normally such exigencies feel like cheating, Cregger is resourceful enough to make the connections not only meaningful but quite funny. 

The plot’s linchpin is an older woman called Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), who is so imaginatively drawn and performed that you don’t mind that she herself is a device who’s been dropped into the story in order to make sense of it. Personally, I didn’t find Weapons as scary as many reviews have made it out to be, if only because the premise is so ridiculous, but the ending is a hoot, and does satisfactorily follow, in its own bizarre way, the intricate goings-on that came before. I hear there’s going to be a prequel. A sequel is out of the question. 

Maldoror, in French and Italian, now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Weapons now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Maldoror home page in Japanese

Weapons home page in Japanese

Maldoror photo (c) Frakas Productions – The Jokers Films – One Eyed – RTBF – France 2 – 2024

Weapons photo (c) 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.