The Axe

Synopsis: Bruno Davert (José Garcia) is made redundant from his well-paid job as chemical engineer and despite his skills and experience cannot find a new job so he comes up with a novel method for improving his chances.

Although this black comedy is in some respects a very different project for Costa-Gavras, who is best known for his confrontational “Left” films, Z (1969) and State Of Seige (1973), deftly woven into its ironically humorous Hitchcockian murder plot is an acidic reflection on the present state of European “turbo-capitalism”, as it is referred to in the script, also by Costa-Gavras.

Bruno Davert is a typically anonymous corporate employee who, when he finds himself rejected by the same economic rationalist system to which he had given his unthinking allegiance, turns against it in a very destructive way. From Joel Schumacher’s tragic Falling Down (1993) to Paul Weitz’s soft-shoe In Good Company (2004) there are many films which have dealt with the deranging effects of unemployment on adult males. The Axe is a worthy addition to the collection.

Based on a novel by David Westlake who also wrote the novel on which the classic revenge movie Point Blank (1967) was based, this is also a kind of payback movie although the combination of Costa-Gavras’s social commentary (advertising images of female body parts, sexy cars and grabs from verbally and physically violent American movies are interpellated throughout) and the central character’s matter-of-fact approach to his grisly undertaking gives this a much broader palette, being simultaneously both playful and serious.

José Garcia, who played a similar character in 2003’s Après Vous, is well-suited to the role precisely because he is so ordinary and much the same can be said of Karin Viard as his dutiful wife. The rest of the cast are equally solid. The transposition from an American to a European context is well-done and the production team evidently had a sufficient budget to work with in creating the settings for Davert’s story. Although some may find the ending variously glib or confusing, The Axe is for most part intelligently entertaining, albeit at 140 minutes perhaps unnecessarily long.

 

 

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