Sick of The Da Vinci Code? Try "Rivières pourpres II: Les anges de l'apocalypse" (Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse). It's bloody and violent, but it's French and it's fun. And it has Jean Reno. Spoilers ahead.
This is a big, dumb action flick, but being French, it's not dumb, just complicated. You could easily turn off your brain, sit back and enjoy the ride. But if you're up for a bloody, paranoid and very French pop meditation about the modern repercussions of medieval history, pay attention to the dialogue. It's worth it, even in subtitles.
The story begins with a murdered man immured inside a monastery cell wall. Jean Reno's canny Commissaire Niemans investigates, along with his cocky young partner, Reda. The monastery is run by secretive monks with extraordinary powers whose order supposedly died out centuries ago. It's built right near the Maginot Line, a set of listening posts built by the French after WWI to watch for another German invasion. It failed, both for the French and for the Nazis who later took it to watch for an Allied invasion.
Things get screwy when the murder victim appears to have the DNA of Jesus Christ. Other men show up murdered in ways resembling the deaths of apostle martyrs. It turns out they all participated in a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper.
This isn't a Da Vinci Code knock-off, though; the DNA storyline is a red herring. The plot is really about a book owned by Lothair II, great-grandson of Charlemagne (remember him?). Its discovery could bring the Apocalypse. Hence the title.
Charlemagne's grandsons divided his great empire, creating the bones of what eventually became France, Germany and Italy. Lothair's father fought over the Empire with his brothers all his life. The movie is a post-medieval contest between France and Germany over their shared Carolingian legacy-Lothair's book, which is discovered on the often contested border between their two countries. An aged Nazi found it under the Maginot Line during WWII and wants to unite Germany and France under a new Nazi regime. Christopher Lee, naturally, plays the Nazi.
You couldn't set a movie like this in North America, even if it weren't a big, dumb action flick. But in Europe, medieval history is just next door, down the street-and underground. And it could resurface at any time.
