One Night
One Night
| 14 March 2012 (USA)
One Night Trailers

In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, which feel the needs to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...

Reviews
Nonureva Really Surprised!
Supelice Dreadfully Boring
FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
ross-minet As the prosecutor states: a third of the population is on neuroleptics, another third are cowards. Selfishness, cowardness, guilt and shame are the fabric of this slow paced, Scandinavian style movie. It is a false thriller. The true murderer is the social breakdown.It reminded me of "12 angry men" with a twist. 38 zombies would be more appropriate. With beautiful images of Le Havre port where, in a sequence, loaders and machines dance a threatening ballet. A disheartening but relevant subject movies are not supposed to cover.Yvan Attal looks stubbornly stoned face which is the only proper attitude. He seems to know exactly his fate. The cast plays well, anger, guilt or shame, which is not an easy task.
Bart I think the story itself is very interesting and keeps people busy in these times but how this movie highlights the theme is a pity.The acting is not so well, at some points it looks like a cheap (American style) soap series with the same 'soapy' camera shots and thin conversations. It gets worse as the movie progresses and the director is trying to get emotions in the viewer but that didn't work that well. Some dialogs are just not natural in the emotional state the people intend to be. The part on the beach with the man (lead actor) reading the newspaper article of the journalist is really lightly and the movie itself feels like a rattled off story.There's not much wrong with the lighting and cinematic quality. There are some very pretty harbor/boat/city shots in the movie, especially in the beginning but later in the movie some (repeated) shots start to irritate and the director uses the same silence/hard-noisy sound trick too much. The camera angles were pretty standard in dialogs. The movie is more photographic than cinematic.If the story is not so strong and the acting is not so well, the soundtrack can save the 'general atmosphere' of the movie. Unfortunately, that part also failed because of the very simple and obvious guitar tunes.A story like this should hit the 'emotional snare' but I think the the director failed to attract the audience in his emotional story.There are much better (French) movies available so my advice is to skip this one.
david-robin In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, who feels the need to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...I was really appealed by the premises of this plot. That is also why I was really disappointed with the resulting film. Let me enumerate the main caveats I was annoyed with :scripts and acting. The dialogs often sound awkward, unnatural and sometimes I was wondering if I was looking at theater rather than cinema. The acting is not good (especially with the main roles), but I am not sure if actors or director have to be blamed.Le Havre. This city and its harbor is constantly in the picture, but the director does not really use it. Is it metaphor of dehumanization of modern urban life? Is it because the city center was rebuilt with bare concrete after 1945? The effect is wasted.the end. The scenario introduces many story elements which could have be explored and resolved into a powerful conclusion. Contrarily, the actual movie end is coming out of nowhere, unimpressive, and I felt, stupid.
ninonski I'm sorry, but this movie might be the worst I've ever seen. It's about a murder which happens in an Urban area, in Le Havre, but no one claims to have seen nor heard anything. Of course, they are lying. This could be quite an interesting subject, but in this movie it's not. It is never explained why the witnesses didn't do or say anything. In the meantime a lot of people are staring at each other, using big words without meaning and making a problem out of nothing. And we get shots of the port of Le Havre which doesn't seem to have any purpose either. Not to mention the acting is really not any good, in particular Sophie Quinton is terrible. It would be nice if they tried to find a psychological explanation for this, but they don't. Instead there are these typical cliché characters, the noisy reporter, the straight up policeman and the antihero. I really regret seeing this and would not recommend it to anyone.