Relegated to a very mixed bag of supporting roles in recent years (Couples Retreat or Pink Panther 2, anyone?), Jean Reno is back in a lead role in crime thriller** 22 Bullets**. To celebrate he's put on his best tough-guy face and armed himself to the teeth for the film's new quad poster.
As the title and bullet-peppered promo indicate, 22 Bullets sees Reno on the receiving end of a serious number of shells as Marseille gangster Charly Matteï. Long retired to spend time with his family and, we hope, water his pot plant, Matteï is tracked down by rivals to a carpark in the old port and left him for dead, riddled with 22 bullets.
Big mistake. The film is, after all, subtitled 'Revenge of the Professional', a nod to León, a man with something of a track record in making people dead and is loosely based on the life of a man known to his friends as 'Mad Jacky'. And if that doesn't make a sensible gangster think twice, nothing will.
Mad Jacky is Jacques Imbert, a notorious Marseille hardcase, who, like Reno's Matteï, was gunned down and left for dead by rival gangsters. **22 Bullets **is loosely based on The Immortal, Franz-Olivier Giesbert's novel of Imbert's life. The gangster had seven bullets removed from his body and was paralysed in his right arm. As Le Monde noted with admirable sang-froid at the time: "Small matters, he learned to shoot with the left."
22 Bullets is out on September 3.