"Coup De Torchon" is technically well-made and well-acted (as you'd expect from a French prestige picture), but it doesn't seem to have much of a point to make, unless it is trying to tell us, as Pauline Kael accurately puts it, that "killing on a small scale is less immoral than killing on a big scale". It begins as a pitch-black comedy, but it stops being funny when Noiret kills a completely innocent person; from that point on, it seems to have nowhere to go but down. At 123 minutes this film is too long, and it runs out of steam long before the end, although some scenes do retain their shock value. One major plus is the fresh-looking cinematography; on DVD, the film looks as if it was made only a few years ago. ** out of 4.
Review of Clean Slate
