Film reviews

Some people say that he has no face, others say that he has a thousand faces.

Paris, 1830. A mysterious assassin, a figure in black cloak, with a mirror instead of a face, kills his victims and takes their souls. The name of this killer is Alchemist. He is called so because, as rumour says, he had made his mirror mask out of a magic substance, to which the blood of young virgins is added. This mask allows him to stay young forever.

The detective Francois Vidocq (Gerard Depardieu) is trying to catch the murderer.

The beginning of the film is rather confusing, because the main character, whose name gave the film its title, dies when fighting against his enemy.

After this has happened, a young journalist and Vidocq's biographer Etienne Boisset (Guillaume Canet), who is eager to revenge the Alchemist and to finish his book about Vidocq, begins his own investigation.

The film combines the elements of action, thriller, mystery and detective, at the same time managing to break one of the fundamental rules of the detective genre…

Modern digital technology allowed the creation of the fantastic, magnificent, gloomy and overwhelming atmosphere of 19th century Paris for this film – a centre of beauty and vice, progressive ideas and dark secret knowledge.

The scenery has a not-quite-real quality at times, but this only adds to the mystery of the plot. Vidocq has one of the most unexpected endings among films of the same genre, which definitely makes it one of the best examples of thriller and detective mystery released in the beginning of the 21st century.