Night Zoo (1987)
Director: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This unconvincing French-Canadian thriller is a dawdler, with outbreaks of nastiness followed by listlessly arty longeurs. Marcel (Maheu) gets out of prison and goes to retrieve his loot, but a couple of bent cops are determined on their cut. Meanwhile, Marcel's girl Julie (Adams) has gone on the game, and his dad Albert (Le Bel) has a weak ticker which makes family reconciliation yet another priority, and our hero spends a lot of time blasting about on his motorbike. Dad's birthday party apart, it is determinedly sleazy. We are treated to Marcel getting forcibly sodomised in prison at the start, blown in an insanitary lav by one of the cops, Marcel's labouring rump as he attempts to reunite with Julie, and an improbable scene in a porno peep show in which the bad guys threaten Julie with a syringe. There are lots of empty threats featuring gunshots across the bows, and Marcel's loft is so spacious you wonder why he needs the money anyway.Author: BC
Cast & crew
Director: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Producer: Roger Frappier, Pierre Gendron
Cast: Gilles Maheu, Roger Le Bel, Lynne Adams, Lorne Brass, Germain Houde, Corrado Mastropasqua, Jerry Snell, Denys Arcand full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 115 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now