Simon Killer

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2013-04-05 NY/LA
• Running Time: 105 min.
• Director: Antonio Campos
• Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Alexandra Neil, Michaol Abiteboul, Nicolas Ronchi, Lila Salet, Solo, Constance Rousseau
• Writer: Antonio Campos
• Distributor: IFC Films

"The meek shall inherit the Earth," somebody said once-- probably Truffaut, writing in Cahiers du Cinema. Two pictures into his thrilling career, writer/director Antonio Campos seems determined to show us that might not be anything to celebrate. The worst that can be said of Campos's Simon Killer is that it does more or less the same thing his Aftershool, only in Paris. (It's like Rush Hour 3 in that way.) It's one part Blow Up to three parts Rushmore-as-psychological horror flick. Blond, scruffy Brady Corbet is the Angry Young Man this time around, and Campos tips his hand with that title. Simon Ladykiller would've left him more room to maneuver, non? Simon is uncannily good at making women trust him-- almost as good as Corbet, with his haunted, vacant eyes, is at making us distrust Simon, even when he isn't doing anything remotely suspicious. He meets his quarry in a brothel; if you believe that either Simon or Victoria, his chosen escort, are going to respect the limited, transactional boundaries of the hooker-john relationship, then you have never seen a movie before. After their first, abbreviated encounter, Simon returns and forces Victoria to see him as a person via the oldest trick in le livre: getting her to dress his wounds following a street scuffle that may not actually have occurred. Soon he's crashing at her place; naturally he requires no time at all to come up with a risky plan that'll allow her to stop turning tricks.