Alexandre Landry, Remy Girard
“THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE” My rating: B
111 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Perched somewhere between light-hearted caper film and savage social critique, “The Fall of the American Empire” slips effortlessly into Denys Arcand’s impressive resume.
In films like “The Decline of the American Empire” and the Oscar-winning “The Barbarian Invasions” this giant of French Canadian cinema has specialized in amusing sex comedies that mask (barely) his trenchant observations on how self-indulgence and obsessive intellectualism are blithely leading us into the end days.
(Arcand also gave us the jaw-dropping “Jesus of Montreal,” a religious allegory about an actor playing Christ in a church-sponsored passion play.)
On the surface “Fall…” gives us the familiar story of a Joe Blow who stumbles across a fortune in mob money and must go through all sorts of moral and physical gymnastics to keep it.
It’s got tough cops (possibly corrupt ones), vengeful gangsters, shady businessmen and, of course, a whore with a heart of gold.
In the film’s first scene our “hero,” bespectacled delivery truck driver Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry), is sitting in a Quebec diner with his bank clerk girlfriend Linda (Florence Longpre). Basically he’s blaming his empty and pointless life on his advanced intellect; only stupid people, he claims, enjoy material success. Pierre-Paul has a handful of post-graduate degrees and he’s still lifting crates for minimum wage.
After agreeing that the Trump phenomenon can be explained by the maxim that “imbeciles worship cretins,” the couple decide to go their separate ways. Neither seems too broken up about it.
That afternoon on his delivery route Pierre-Paul stumbles across the robbery of a strip mall shop used by the local syndicate as its underground bank. The stickup men and their victims go down in a deadly crossfire; Pierre-Paul is startled but has the presence of mind to snatch two cash-stuffed gym bags dropped by the perps. He stashes them in his modest apartment.
Butler's Cinema Scene 