La Prochaine fois je viserai le coeur

2014, France, directed by Cédric Anger

Directed by former Cahiers critic Cédric Anger, the film deals with a bizarre and brutal true-life episode in the 1970s in which a series of murders/assaults was committed by a police officer whose role on the investigation team caused delays and misdirection in bringing events to a conclusion. Guillaume Canet plays the lead, and he's pretty good in an absolutely buttoned-down role, while the northeastern setting is very well-used, echoing, at times, Bruno Dumont’s earlier films. One of the French reviews I read suggested it had something of Zodiac about it, which whatever the film's other characteristics isn't true at all in plot terms -- although we follow the real-life chronology this isn't a procedural, rather a character study, albeit one that doesn't suggest much at all about the character's psychology, simply presenting him as a blank slate.