Director – Didier Grousset, Screenplay – Luc Besson, Didier Grousset & Michele Halberstadt, Producers – Luc Besson & Laurent Petin, Photography – Jean-Francois Robin, Music – Eric Serra, Special Effects – Georges Demetreau, Production Design – Dan Weil. Production Company – A.R.P./Gaumont/Les Films du Loup.
Cast
Richard Bohringer (Inspector Romain Pascot), Michel Galabru (Albert), Dominique Lavanant (Laure), Kim Massee (Lea), Romaine Bohringer (Julie Pascot), Harry Cleven (Patrick), Riton Liebman (Olive Mercier), Etienne Chicot (Samrat), Jean-Paul Muel (Minister)
Plot
The scientist Albert is terminated from his job. Left at home alone while his live-in son and girlfriend go on vacation, Albert is driven crazy by the inanity of tv announcers. A few weeks later, Romain Pacot, a detective with the Paris gendarmerie, is asked to lead an investigation as announcers begin dying during live tv broadcasts. As more of these deaths occur, Pacot and colleagues puzzle over the cause – the victims appear to have been shot but there is no bullet found. Behind the killings is Albert who has created a device that can shoot someone via the tv screen.
Kamikaze was the first feature film for Didier Grousset who has maintained a career as a director since then, working in both film and tv. More prominently, Kamikaze was also one of the first films from Luc Besson who co-writes the screenplay and co-produces. At the time, Besson only had a couple of films under his belt with Le Dernier Combat (1983) and Subway (1985), before subsequently going onto the international acclaim of Nikita (1990), Leon/The Professional (1993) and The Fifth Element (1997), among others. Didier Grousset had worked as a second-unit director for Besson on Subway.
Kamikaze is more a gimmick idea than it is a fully fleshed-out screenplay – disgruntled and misanthropic scientist Michel Galabru invents a ray device that can remotely kill people on live tv. To me, it feels like a premise that feels like it should have been played as a comedy. Nevertheless, the filmmakers decide otherwise and make the film into a French police thriller as we follow inspector Richard Bohringer as he sets out to solve the mystery of the killings.
Mad scientist Michel Galabru trains his ray device on the tv set
Didier Grousset does okay when the police thriller aspect kicks in. Richard Bohringer makes a befittingly dishevelled detective and strikes up an engaging relationship with his daughter (played by Bohringer’s own daughter Romaine), while Michel Galabru is perfectly suited as the misanthropic scientist. The disappointment of the film though is that it never moves out beyond being a gimmick idea – nothing that the script places any twists or turns on, the central premise is the whole of the film.
Kamikaze is often confused with the German-made Kamikaze 1989 (1982), which came out around the same era, and is also a science-fiction film starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a near-future police inspector.
