This movie is exceptional. In same way Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are. Story is well thought out, down to the point, not all characters are fleshed out (Reservoir Dogs does fleshing out much better), but they are not meant to be for reasons that become obvious once you watch the movie.Acting is superb. Casting is great. Story is believable. Ending is perhaps predictable (or I saw too many movies, perhaps both), but it is fitting. There should be lot more movies like this one. A rare gem!This movie had rating of 6.4, I gave it a 10. I don't really understand why would anybody give it less than 8. If you are not into genre, don't watch the movie, or at least don't rate it down for all the wrong reasons. I rate movies either 1 or 10 for very simple reason. All the other numbers are meaningless. I either recommend you see a movie, or advise you to stay away as when compared to other movies of its type falls too short to bother with. I neither rate, not review average movies.

Eric Stoltz plays a man named Zed who travels to Paris in order to catch up with a childhood friend named Eric (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and help him rob a Federal Reserve bank. Upon his arrival, he sleeps with a call girl named Zoe (Julie Delpy) who he ends up falling in love with. When Zed goes to meet Eric, he ends up spending the night with him and all of his junkie friends who hide out in a run down apartment building with a dead feline near the entrance to their room. They plan to rob the bank the next morning, and Zed is going to be the safe cracker. After much passing out, puking, hallucinating, and a male rape, Zed and the rest of the gang awaken in a drunken daze, already late for their robbery, and then they foolishly attempt to rob the bank while still moderately trashed, hungover, and restless. Naturally things go very wrong very fast, and it becomes no longer about getting the money, but more about trying to survive.If Roger Avary's intention was to make a truly memorable art house exploitation film, he succeeded with flying colors. I'm pretty sure that this was intention and there's no denying that this is a good film. I have some serious problems with Killing Zoe, however, and those problems have much to do with the first two thirds of the picture. Avary spends a very large portion of the film in this junkie world with these truly atrocious and ugly characters doing ugly things. I felt that too much time was spent in this world. The only likable character is Julie Delpy's character, and she doesn't get nearly enough screen time as she should. As for Eric Stoltz, he pretty much plays the same character as he played in Pulp Fiction, though not anywhere near as much as a prick. His character, Zed, for the most part is a fairly goofy, eccentric, and slight perverted guy. I liked how he wasn't an entirely sympathetic protagonist. His character, for the most part, works. Likewise for his friend Eric, who is a completely horrific villain. He's disgusting, sleazy, skeletal-looking, and a sweaty mess of a man who has little conscience and no morals, and I applaud Jean-Hugues Anglade for playing a role that few actors would have the balls to play. This brings me to my biggest gripe with the film, however. These are the three main characters, but they are also the three most interesting characters as well. Every other character is completely disposable they take up far too much screen time that should have been devoted to the three main characters. To make matters worse, in the third act of the film when the characters actually try to rob the bank, a good portion of all of these characters are killed off almost immediately. While I applaud Roger Avary for crafting such a strong vision of graphic carnage in the third act, I felt that he was betraying the trash quality that took place in the first two acts with these junkie characters getting slaughtered so damn quickly. As the last act of the film stands, most of the characters end up getting killed off almost constantly and with little to no emotion. When it is not a member of the gang getting killed it is either a security guard or an innocent civilian. Somebody is almost always getting killed, often in over-the-top fashion.What I did love about Killing Zoe was the look of the film. The bank that the film takes place in during the final act is just gorgeous in how claustrophobic it is. The walls of the bank are red, and it only adds to the psychotic nature of the Eric character. The character really is quite terrifying, and the bank that Avary shot in has a perfect interior for these sort of characters. The middle section mostly takes place in real grimy, dirty, dark areas that look completely hellish. Somehow the bank looks like a scarier location than the junkie hideouts, and I liked that. The opening and closing scenes show some beautiful shots of Paris as well, which definitely helped elevate the film even more. I also felt that the final act of the film, despite the gratuitous bloodshed and carnage, really was quite suspenseful and intense. The film is so furious in it's tone and the final act really pulls it all together. At times it is difficult to watch because the audience knows right away that the situation is going to go wrong and the characters are doomed. When the bank robbery actually starts, it is so disorganized and so uncoordinated that a feeling of unhinged maniacal danger sets in immediately. It makes the film a little bit different from other heist films. The characters are all young, hapless, and careless people who have abandoned reality.Killing Zoe lacks a sense of control, which both helps and hurts the film. On one hand, it certainly helps make the final act of the film that much more shocking and realistic. On the other hand, it is difficult to look part the first two thirds of the film. I do think that this film has an audience, but I also think that it's difficult to call it a good film. It works in a lot of ways. Visually, it's better than it needs to be. The performances are all very strong, not to mention ballsy, and the vision of hell this film paints is pretty tough to shake. It's a rough film, but it manages to have a lot of energy. It is a very flawed film. However, if you're a fan of trash cinema and exploitation, you may want to give this a try. It's a messy film, but it's effective and definitely memorable.

There is an energy behind Killing Zoe, there is a passion and a commitment from its director behind Killing Zoe and that is to make a fast, furious and bloody film that entertains as well as shocks in equal measure. Given the situation regarding this film's production, the film comes across upon reading the pre-production stage as a bit of an accident. Whilst scouting for locations for Reservoir Dogs, director Roger Avary would discover a place where a 'perfect' heist film could take place. Since the whole gimmick (in the nicest possible way) for Reservoir Dogs is that it's a heist film without the heist, the bank couldn't really be used but it suited Avary's other script he had going and that was Killing Zoe.An interesting back-story to a film that is never anything but interesting, apart from perhaps being entertaining at certain points. For Reservoir Dogs to take a mere two years before it itself would become a victim of a pastiche is testament to Reservoir Dog's influential power as well as Avary's own passion and drive behind this production. Notice how the script supposedly took a week to write, also.The film revolves predominantly around a heist going on in a French bank in which master safecracker Zed (Stoltz) is working with an old French buddy who also just happens to be a heroin addict and a psychopathic criminal, amongst other things. He is Eric (Anglade) and is played with ruthless efficiency by the respective French actor. But Killing Zoe is not another routine heist film. Killing Zoe spells out all the tiny, painstaking details that go with robbing a bank and it utilises the conventional 'race against time' drive. Amongst other things, the guys will have to go through each hostage one by one in order to get codes, they will have to pass the time in the main office while other robbers work downstairs on the vault and they will have to deal with any security guards they might miss once entering new bank owned territory.But that's the joy of Killing Zoe. Once it all gets up and running, there is no going back. It is a roller-coaster of violence, disturbance and dark, dark humour that isn't over until it's over. The film is all about stealing and mugging. Zed is the perfect 'fish out of water': an American in Paris; an American in France; an American in Europe. One of the first scenes of the film has a porter stand there and accept a tip that is probably too much; Zed is being 'robbed'. Then there is Zoe (Delpy) herself who charges a thousand Francs for sex but maintains she is no prostitute. "In that case, can I have my money back?" wise-cracks Zed but if you go by her convincing analysis of what she is, she is right and thus has got herself some money not through stealing but in a slimy working way. Similar to the porter who gets extra cash bringing up bags and Zoe acting as a prostitute for money, Zed and his group of cronies are breaking into banks; breaking into vaults and trying to steal the cash that they probably all think they earn by doing this. With this reading, the film is about greed.Then there are the influences of other work made by Tarantino and Avary round about the time. The sex scene between Zed and Zoe is inter-cut with images from the Nosferatu film echoing the technique used in Natural Born Killers; a film Tarantino wrote but disowned. There is also the establishment of a genuine love affair between a male lead and a prostitute echoing True Romance of the previous year, another Tarantino penned film. So if Zed is established as this lost soul as an American in France, it is because he is mugged out of a thousand Francs from a girl who isn't selling herself; he is never given the time in plain English and is informed by Eric about how wrong foreign people are when it comes to French iconography and tourism. But when push comes to shove and he is placed in his 'zone', Zed performs. This is first followed through when he looks at a map of the bank and comes up with an alternate plan that will save them time as well as possible trouble – he has solved the robbers a problem.Killing Zoe is a film that although is American, does not conform to European stereotypes just archetypes the genre demands. The French are not buffoons, the Englishman played by Gary Kemp is not a total idiot and if anything they are all a match for one another with the Zed, the American, himself sticking out for ridicule thanks to the evidence mentioned in the previous paragraph. Eric is a psychotic criminal into hard drugs and homicide, he would also rather blow someone up than shoot them in the vault. The film is one that does not start off with typical French iconography of whatever you like but stays a ground level, literally. The fast moving cars and sense of travelling kicks the film off perfectly and with a good guy to root for, a love story cleverly thrown in and an awesome bad guy, it is no surprise the film maintains that air of near perfection throughout.

Quentin Tarantino's partner in crime Roger Avary (co-writer on "Pulp Fiction") ventures out on his own (Q.T. goes exec. prod. this time) for this over-boiled French thriller.Eric Stoltz is Zed, safe cracker extraordinaire who has drifted over to France from the U.S. at the request of an old friend. There he teams up with a motley crew of drugged out hippies who, with little or no planning, think they can knock off a bank vault full of gold bullion on a French national holiday.Avary has reworked the robbery gone wrong theme that Tarantino developed so well in "Reservoir Dogs", only "Killing Zoe" is not good enough to survive on the strength of this alone, so Avary has thrown in a rather beautiful distraction. Julie Delpy is Zoe, a student come call girl who entertains Zed on his arrival in Paris. A stunning distraction she certainly is, but nothing more.I guess our director wanted to add a different angle to this basic theme, but sadly the move did not help to add the depth his shallow plot so desperately needed. There was never a story in this idea, which was nothing more than that, an idea. Even the surreal journey into the seedy dives of Paris is uninspiring. I figure one would have to concede that there was never much of a movie in the story of a bunch of gangsters shooting each other up over a botched jewellery heist either, that is until you add intricate characters and snappy dialogue. "Reservoir Dogs" had it, "Killing Zoe" did not.Stoltz's strong interpretation of the doubtful Zed and Jean Hughes-Anglade's mad portrayal of the obsessive ring leader do nothing to lift proceedings. In short, Avary has unsuccessfully attempted to conjure entertainment out of nothing.Friday, September 15, 1995 - Astor Theatre