Product Description

A hit and run driver kills a child. The child's father Charles wants to do everything to revenge the death of his son. After a long investigation, a chance meeting puts him in the presence of Paul, a despicable garage owner, who terrorizes his family. Paul is the murderer of Charles' son. Charles waits for the right moment to face Paul and to bring him to justice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92899 in DVD
• Brand: PATHFINDER HOME ENTERTAINMENT
• Released on: 2003-05-20
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

From the Back Cover
A hit and run driver kills a child. The child's father Charles wants to do everything to revenge the death of his son. After a long investigation, a chance meeting puts him in the presence of Paul, a despicable garage owner, who terrorizes his family. Paul is the murderer of Charles' son. Charles waits for the right moment to face Paul and to bring him to justice.

Customer Reviews

A Marvellous TAle of Grief and Revenge
Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy) is an affluent, middle-aged writer of children's stories whose son has just been killed in a hit and run road accident in Brittany. The police draw a blank at finding the culpable driver. But Thenier, driven by a vengeful obsession, stumbles on a piece of information that leads him to the man he is after. This turns out to be Paul Decourt (Jean Yanne), a wealthy garage owner and a loathsome bully who tyrannizes over his family. It is easy enough for Thenier's hatred of Decourt to survive meeting him but he swiftly finds himself forming emotional ties to the latter's sister-in-law, glamorous TV actress Helene Lanson (Caroline Cellier) and to his deeply alienated son Philippe (Marc di Napoli).

In Britain this film is known as `The Beast Must Die'. The latter title is better. Partly because it is the original title of the English novel (by Nicholas Blake) on which the film is based. Partly because unlike the American title it doesn't make a nonsense of the title's allusion to `Ecclesiastes' as paraphrased by Brahms for the piece Chabrol incorporates in the sound track: as translated in the movie, `Il faut que la bete meure; mais l'homme aussi. L'un et l'autre doivent mourir.' `This man must die' doesn't really get it, does it? (Oh and by the way, be careful you don't go confusing this film with `The Beast Must Die' a very silly, but nonetheless very enjoyable and in any case extremely different British werewolf flick from 1974).

The likes of Quentin Tarantino and Chan-wook Park have made vengeance a fashionable subject for movies these days but you'll have to look a long way to find a film that tackles the subject as intelligently, honestly and beautifully as this. It's like a variant on "Kill Bill" but with a moral and intellectual maturity Tarantino will never come close to. It's one of the best of the Chabrol movies I know, wonderfully atmospheric and with Charol's fabulous flair for the small quirky details of the more or less everyday French live whose explosive disruptions form the subject matter of his often, and certainly this is a case in point, wonderful dramas.

A cerebral thriller of vengeance
After a hit and run accident Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy) loses his only son and he is determined to find and murder the perpetrator. In Charles's investigation he records every minute detail and notion that passes through his mind in regards to the death of his son in a small black journal with a red marker. However, the private investigation that Charles is running seems to come to an end as he watches with a discouraged mind all clues lead to nowhere, until by accident he comes across some information that leads him to the killer of his son. Calculated and determined Charles enters the world of the killer as he attempts to get as close as possible to carry out his vengeful plan. This Man Must Die is a cerebral thriller that is based on a novel by Nicholas Blake that Chabrol adapted brilliantly to a terrific cinematic creation. The suspenseful atmosphere that Chabrol creates is inescapable, as the audience can hear Charles's dark thoughts as he scribbles them down in his black journal, but cleverly Chabrol leaves something untold that will keep the audience in awe until the end.

Masterpiece of Chabrol's second phase
Chabrol's name brings to mind two things, the French New Wave & Alfred Hitchcock. If you're looking for the New Wave side of the equation I would suggest Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins & Les Bonnes Femmes. All three early 60's New Wave masterpieces. By the late 60's however Chabrol was a different kind of film maker. This Man Must Die along with La Femme Infidele & Le Boucher are what might be considered the best films from Chabrol's second phase. Until his resurgence in the 90's with the Cesar winning La Ceremonie these three second phase films were also considered his last great films. La Femme Infidele, Le Boucher & This Man Must Die(under its French title Que la Bete Muere) have not been the easiest films to find but have now all been rereleased in March 2003.

This Man Must Die begins with a little boy walking back to his home from a day at the sea. As he crosses the desolate street in the seaside village near his home a speeding car hits and kills the young boy. The car never stops but speeds away from the scene. Slowly the villagers gather round the corpse and when the father arrives on the scene he screams with helpless rage. After a period of mourning he begins to plot his revenge. He plans to find, earn the trust and then kill whoever it was that killed his son. The plot is one of Chabrols best. Each phase of the fathers revenge is fascinating to watch. We get to follow the fathers investigations as he hunts down the murderer and at the same time we witness what effect this revenge has on his psychology. When he does finally find the murderer he befriends him/her as planned and is invited to spend a week at the murderers seaside estate. All along he wonders to himself if he will actually be able to commit murder but as he gets to know this murderer he finds he is a most despicable creature who bullys every one around him. Murder nonetheless is a complicated thing and Chabrol is the master of the plot twist so you can sit back and enjoy this knowing full well you are in the hands of a master.