Empire of the Wolves (2005)

Having enjoyed one maverick cop film below, I thought I would try another, but to keep to the police analogy, this French flick was flat-footed indeed.  There have been a series of murders in the illegal immigrant Turkish community in Paris and the young inspector ropes in retired (and disgraced) cop Jean Reno, who was once a big force in this community.  Simultaneously we are presented with the storyline of a young wife who discovers that her memory has been erased and that her face has been altered by plastic surgery.  These two strands are meant to be related, but it really took some doing to understand the relationship or to believe it for that matter.  The source novel is from the same author as "Crimson Rivers" -- another policier with Reno (but not the same character) and I understand from my friend that the film was fairly faithful to the book.  I just hope that the novel was more coherent.  I usually like Reno, despite his increasingly scruffy appearance, but unlike the Korean film below, I had little tolerance for either his methods or their results in this muddled thriller.