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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Crime > Corporate > Genocide > france > Heartbeat Detector (aka La Question Humaine/2007/French/New Yorker DVD)

Heartbeat Detector (aka La Question Humaine/2007/French/New Yorker DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Film: C+

 

 

Nicolas Klotz’s Heartbeat Detector (2007) is a well-acted, ambitious drama about a corporation with a dark secret in its past that could cause it to unravel after over a half-century.  Mathieu Amalric plays a company investigator who finds himself in between two feuding higher-ups; including one (Michael Lonsdale) who tries to appeal to the investigator that he is being conspired against.

 

Needless to say, it is a no-brainer guess that the company was involved in the Holocaust and seems a little late in the game to be telling such a story, though it dos not necessarily trivialize that event.  The acting is top notch, yet the film never goes far enough in its subject matter and that stops it from being potentially great.  Elisabeth Perceval’s screenplay (from the Francois Emmanuel book) is well-written, yet the impact is not what it could have been and the film just ends.  Sadly, the story told reflects a reality that certain companies (like Bayer) cannot come to terms with their past participation in those ugly events.  It is never too soon to deal with that.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 is well shot and nicely framed throughout, but this transfer is a little soft and that effects both depth and detail.  Color can be a bit muted, but editing is good.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is not much better than the 2.0 version, stretching the sound a bit.  The actual recoding is not bad and we wonder if DTS would have helped.  The only extra is the original theatrical trailer.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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