It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to talk about a Canadian movie. It’s also been a long time since I’ve been able to review a new movie I saw in cinemas, as with theatres reopening across the country and practicing safe distancing, I was able to return for it and a few other older movies that are being played in place of the usual new releases out of the U.S. If you’re in a region with relatively few COVID cases, take the proper precautions, and are healthy, I’d urge you to go to the cinemas now when they need audiences most. Plenty of your favourites are playing at reduced rates.
Also, there are occasional outliers of recently released films in select cinemas, including Target Number One, a true story crime film from Quebecois director Daniel Roby. It’s a dramatization of a scandal in 1989 when a young drug addict was set up by the CSIS to take the fall for an incompetent international drug bust, winding up unjustly imprisoned in Thailand; and of the investigative journalist who fought to get him out. It’s an interesting enough story, though Target Number One consciously glosses over some of its most compelling facets in its desire to be a historical-political thriller in the vein of Oliver Stone.
But it’s certainly a distinctly Canadian variant on such stories, as much as it might sometimes strive for an American attitude. This is a movie that after all emphasizes in its postscript that the action scenes were fabricated for dramatic effect, something an American equivalent would never feel the need to acknowledge. And the conspiracy is never directly linked to particular figures or political organizations, merely the spectre of “the government” (it would have been Mulroneys’ at the time) -as though unwilling to risk offence. Even the lead characters’ name is changed from Alain Olivier to Daniel Leger for whatever reason, and all but the reporter Victor Malarek appear to be composite characters rather than depictions of real individuals.
These restraints are a little odd and leave the movies’ honesty in question, particularly for those of us unaware of the real story of this film. Yet it certainly has no love for the CSIS and their actions, recruiting Leger while undercover as drug kingpins in the belief he’s more important than the mere petty criminal he is. The organization is primarily represented through Stephen McHattie, an unpredictable and intimidating presence as always, as careless, unethical, and unprofessional, at one point recruiting McHattie’s son into the operation straight out of police academy -he definitely embodies every toxic trait of law enforcement the filmmakers couldn’t have known would be so timely now.
As he’s being manipulated by both these forces and an unpleasant Jim Gaffigan as his boss and their informant, Daniel Leger never feels like anything more than a dumb kid out of his element. He’s played by Antoine Olivier Pilon of Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, and his performance is definitely a highlight of the film, genuine in a way not a lot of the others are. He wanders through the movie confused and perturbed, as he is constantly scapegoated, and Pilon maintains the characters’ consistency through these changing circumstances even as the films’ structure threatens to jeopardize its’ effect.
Target Number One is weirdly fragmented as a movie, splitting its’ time evenly between Legers’ story and that of Malarek, played by the films’ biggest get, Josh Hartnett. Malarek’s investigation, his tenuous relationship with the Globe & Mail, and his efforts to expose Legers’ story take place at a different time than Legers’ itself -the two merge when Malarek first meets Leger in Taiwan before we have any indication he’s going there. From that point it cuts routinely between Malarek, Leger in prison, and the events that led to his imprisonment. And while this choice isn’t confusing necessarily, it is rather haphazard, abandoning the former two for an about twenty minute sequence of the latter at one point -as though that storyline needed to do catch-up. The way it is written, the film is front-loaded a lot with Malarek to the point his story doesn’t have much momentum anymore by the last act. These sequences are still good, Hartnett is actually one of the movies’ biggest strengths, and I get a kick out of seeing the American actor making so many Canadian references; but it and the other story points the movie is trying to accomplish don’t gel together very organically based on the approach taken to the narrative.
And then there’s the fact that the movie ends long before the story does -or rather the story is re-framed to be Malarek’s rather than Legers’, more about publishing Legers’ story and bringing attention to it than getting him out of jail. Olivier spent eight years imprisoned in Taiwan, and if the film is in any way true to history, he seemed to have found an enlightenment there, turning Buddhist, and leaving finally in 1997 a changed man who bears no ill will to the bastards who put him through that. This is revealed only at the end of Target Number One, as Malarek working for CTV, interviews Leger as he’s finally released. There’s an incredibly interesting story alluded to there that the movie completely overlooks, suggesting that the film never was all that interested in Leger and what he went through, as much as Malarek’s big scoop. Which is fine, but then why divest so much time on Leger, whose story consequently feels very incomplete.
Even with all these shortcomings though, Roby is a competent enough filmmaker and Target Number One a competent, solidly above average film. Jumbled though it may be, the story is still interesting, the tension when needed is pretty strong, that one action sequence is quite well done, and Hartnett, Pilon, and McHattie are usually on hand to carry any given scene. Ordinarily I wouldn’t recommend necessarily rushing out to see it, but cinemas need the boost, and Canadian movies as always especially do. So I say go for it, it’s a worthwhile distraction in any case.
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