"Le Serpent" must be the millionth variation on the innocent-man-on-the-run theme; Hollywood has been doing this sort of story for decades. The script, for some reason, makes it perfectly clear right from the start who the bad guy is and how he operates, thereby largely removing the element of surprise; when he starts infiltrating the life of the leading man, we're waiting for the latter to catch up to what we already know. Still, taken on its own terms (and genre), "Le Serpent" is well-made and has some suspenseful moments, though you have to wait for more than an hour for most of them (at 116 minutes, this film is too long). Clovis Cornillac makes a very convincing bad guy. Olga Kurylenko's part is played up in some DVD posters because of her subsequent stardom, but it's really quite small (and yes, it does feature nudity, but she is a little too thin for my tastes here). **1/2 out of 4.
Review of The Snake
