Retro Film Review: Le Grand Pardon II (1992)

Le Pardon II a.k.a. Day of Atonement, 1992 crime thriller directed by Alexandre Arcady, is just another example how advertisement can create expectations completely different from the actual products. Those who watched the trailer for this film expected low-budget action film dealing with Latino gangsters in Miami and featuring Christopher Walken as its principal star. When they watched the complete film, they got something else - expensive and at times quite spectacular sequel of French crime epic about family of Algerian Jews in which Christopher Walken appears just as one of many supporting actors in rather minor role. Rather complicated plot (which is in many ways incomprehensible to those who haven't seen the first film) revolves around Raymond Bettoun (played by Roger Hanin), former boss of Parisian Jewish underworld who has just spent ten years in prison for following old code of honour. After release Bettoun comes to Miami where he is greeted by his son Maurice (played by Richard Berry), now a wealthy businessman. Raymond doesn't need much clues to figure out that the source of his son's wealth came from money laundering and participation in booming cocaine trade.

It is obvious that Arcady, inspired by Coppola's The Godfather saga, tries to give epic scope to the plot and characters while giving it a setting similar to de Palma's Scarface. Unfortunately, unlike Coppola and de Palma, he has problems handling the material that would work much better in mini-series than in feature film format. There are simply too many characters and subplots for two- hour film to cover properly. The actors, especially Roger Hanin as dignified crime lord, are good, photography is fine, some action scenes are handled very well, but all those elements fail to connect into coherent whole. As a result, Le Pardon II is a film that, despite of its relatively high budget and great display of various talents, looks like a cheap and not very inspired copy of American originals.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 1st 2001)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/40057-le-grand-pardon-2?language=en-US
Critic: AA