The original French film boasted a dream cast of Alain Delon and Jean Gabin in the leading roles and Bouchareb also scores dream cast for his Two Men in Town with Forest Whitaker and Harvey Keitel in the leading roles with Whitaker as released convict William Garnett and Keitel as the sheriff who is out to get him.
Giovanni’s original film was set in France and was an indictment of the French justice system which Giovanni who had served a prison sentence himself had experienced first hand. Bouchareb transports the story to the present day in a small town in New Mexico surrounded by photogenic desert. Garnett who has served an 18 year prison sentence for murdering a deputy sheriff is back in the same town and tyring to go straight after converting to the Muslim faith while in prison.
Lots of dead Mexicans keep turning up in the town mostly murdered or victims or some other tragic death and dramatic tension is supplied by the sheriff of the town who is out to get Garnett because he killed his deputy. But Bouchareb has done away with the core of Giovanni’s story which was the indictment of the French justice system and replaced it with a fairly mundane Western. If this is meant to be an indictment of the American justice system we are never quite sure about this. Garnett even becomes a cowboy. The results do not ring true despite the great cast who make substantial efforts to fill out their characters.
Garnett tries to subdue his anger as his iman advised him before leaving prison with constant prayer despite the injustices of his new life. But the scenario never quite convinces. One of the brightest spots in the film is Brenda Blethyn as Garnett’s parole officer who manages to convince us of her character even if we are not quite convinced of her spending her time listening to French love songs which there is a considerable lack of awareness in towns like the New Mexico town in the film.
Bouchareb presents us with several more stock characters from horse opera Westerns who are mostly one-dimensional. Dolores Heredia plays his pretty girlfriend and one is left wondering what she sees in this ex-felon but films are littered with women who go for bad men trying to get onto the straight path. But this type of understanding and long-suffering female has considerably decreased in recent year. Luis Guzman plays Garnett’s old partner in crime who tries to lure him back into the old life of drug smuggling and crime.
Somehow this film looks like what it is. A visit by a Paris based director to the American southwest where he does not really get into the fabric of the characters who live there to be convincing. Such a film can work in the hands of a master like Wim Wenders or Emir Kusturica but Two Men in Town is not such a film.
France / Algeria / USA / Belgium
Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Cast: Forest Whitaker, Harvey Keitel, Brenda Blethyn, Luis Guzmán, Dolores Heredia
