From the Donald Westlake novel, a satiric black comedy on modern business practices, written & directed by, of all people, politically-minded, Greek-born/French-based Costa-Gavras, of Z/’69 and MISSING/’82. (And note, a Korean remake, NO OTHER CHOICE/’25, on the horizon.*) A cleverly lethal fable about solid company man José Garcia downsized out of his cushy job as top exec at a paper manufacturing company. Now in his forties, with wife, two kids and a mortgage, he’s two years on the job hunt and coming up empty. Too many mid-level types trying for the same few positions. Nothing to do but eliminate the competition . . . literally! Make that lethally. Collecting resumes thru a phony job search ad, he culls replies to find likely hires and moves fast to bump off the best and improve his chances. Costa-Gavras no comedy technician (don’t hold your breath for compound gags), but he does get his points & laughs across by loudly charging forward. With nice complications at home with the family and nice suspense when he hits the road for hits. José Garcia’s dispensable exec carries the film as the sort of hangdog optimist Alberto Sordi brilliantly overplayed in ‘60s Italian films and Jack Lemmon annoyingly overplayed in ‘70s Hollywood. (Garcia even looks a bit like Lemmon.) A tricky postman-always-rings-twice ending isn’t properly set up, but the film mostly comes across.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Easy to imagine a wilder, weirder, funnier version catching fire in ways this one doesn’t. Perhaps the Korean remake will take us there.
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