VIDOCQ (3+ outta 5 stars) Visually impressive mystery/thriller taking place in France around the time of the French Revolution. Gerard Depardieu plays the title character, Vidocq, a brilliant criminologist who is on the trail of a mysterious caped villain who wears a mirrored mask. In the opening scene the villain knocks Vidocq into a fit of fire and a young journalist (Guillame Canet),who is writing a biography of Vidocq, traces the great detective's last steps to bring the mysterious caped figure to justice. So we get flashbacks to Vidocq's investigation inter-cut with the writer's search. Depardieu makes for an interesting hero... sort of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and a professional wrestler. (You rarely saw Holmes pick up a villain and hurl him across a room.) The computerized special effects look a lot better in this movie than they do in some bigger-budgeted Hollywood movies... the backgrounds all have a veneer of unreality about them and yet they are still convincing. The conclusion is not much of a surprise but the discovery of the villain's identity is still pretty satisfying.
