C

Luc Besson and Jean Reno pretty much repeat the formula of “The Professional,” though with a lighter touch and a change of locale, in “Wasabi,” another tale of a macho man who becomes the unlikely protector of an adolescent girl. In this instance, however, the bearlike Reno isn’t playing an angst-ridden hitman but a Parisian cop named Hubert, who’s so roguish that he makes all the American models for such a stereotype–from Stallone to Willis–look like pussycats in comparison. When his unconventional (but invariably successful) methods get him into trouble with his bosses once more, he’s compelled to take a vacation–just in time to go to Japan as the chief beneficiary in the will of a woman he’d loved but lost nearly two decades earlier and has pined over ever since. When he gets to the east, however, he discovers that the bequest is Yumi (Ryoko Hirosue), the daughter the dead woman had had by him after her mysterious disappearance. The punkish kid is suddenly his responsibility until she comes of age only two days later, but it’s an eventful forty-eight hours, because Hubert suspects that his late love was murdered and begins to investigate; the dead woman, moreover, has left her daughter a legacy of some two hundred million dollars–which, as it turns out, is coveted by a ruthless yakuza don. Hubert must undercover the truth about his love’s past while defeating the Japanese mob and bonding with a daughter who’s grown up thinking he’d abandoned her. Happily he has some help from Momo (Michel Muller), an old buddy from the French intelligence office still based in Tokyo. Momo brings a lot of the broad comic relief that a second banana is meant to provide in such lighthearted he-man flicks.

Whether “Wasabi” will tickle your palate–the title comes from the fact that Hubert is so virile that he can consumes vast quantities of the powerful stuff without blinking an eye or feeling the need for water–will depend on your tolerance for the more cartoonish examples of Hong Kong film. Hubert is a ridiculously hard-bitten character, the sort who can effortlessly get out of the most difficult situations, dispatch pursuers with gun or fist without breaking a sweat, and is never at a loss for a clever plan or a less-clever bon mot. Reno plays him with the gruff nonchalance that fans of such nonsense love. But Hubert is still an old softie under it all: his simmering recollection of his only true love has left him inept with other women, and his fumbling effort to connect with his new-found daughter is supposed to charm your socks off. Whether you’ll be willing to buy all this hokum is doubtful. Muller, meanwhile, lays on the hangdog goofiness so thick that you’ll be likely to gag at his antics as strenuously as he does when trying to match Hubert’s wasabi consumption. Hirosue is a still weaker link; Yumi is intended to be one of those irritating youngsters who’s supposed to gradually grows lovable, but she never manages to make the transition.

Still, Gerard Krawczyk directs all the nonsense dextrously, and keeps things moving quickly enough that the more ridiculous plot developments aren’t quite as painful as they might have been. Overall the production is fine, too. The result is a fast-paced, glitzy but extremely silly piece which will please aficionados of the genre but few others.

B

Every once in a while a small film comes along that’s based on an idea so clever, and treats it so smartly, that the result pretty much disarms criticism. That’s the case with Neil Burger’s “Interview with the Assassin,” a wittily constructed and pleasurably unsettling pseudo-documentary that draws on the still-widespread belief that the murder of President John F. Kennedy was a conspiracy rather than the act of a single killer.

The set-up is wickedly simple: Ron Kobeleski (Dylan Haggerty), an out-of-work California TV cameraman, is approached by Walter Ohlinger (Raymond J. Barry), a gruff, grey-haired neighbor, to film his confession to a long-ago crime. Ohlinger claims to have been the rumored second gunman in the Kennedy assassination–the mysterious figure who supposedly fired the fatal shot from the infamous grassy knoll and escaped, leaving the patsy Oswald to take the rap. Walter, who also claims to be terminally ill, explains to Kobeleski that he’d been recruited for the deed by a superior under whom he’d served in the Marines, and that powerful forces are still at work to insure that the truth remains buried. The cameraman is initially incredulous but desperate for a story that could make his career, so he encourages Ohlinger to prove his assertions on film. Before long the duo is on the move across the country to locate people who can corroborate Walter’s unlikely tale.

A number of elements explain why “Interview” works as well as it does. One is the expertly gauged, brilliantly restrained performance of Barry; he captures perfectly the Walter’s world-weary matter-of-factness, his underlying menace, and his periodic glimmers of madness. Barry is good enough to keep viewers guessing about whether he’s what he says he is, or simply nuts; it’s one of those exceptional turns by a splendid character actor that won’t receive the acclaim it deserves, simply because it’s so expertly understated. (There’s an absolutely chilling moment when Ohlinger explains why he’d agreed to kill the president in the first place–for the purely banal reason of feeling powerful–and Barry captures it dead-on.) But Barry wouldn’t be so impressive if Burger hadn’t been so canny in constructing revealing episodes for the character. A visit to Dallas, where Ohlinger walks through the route he took on the day of the assassination, is eerily straightforward, and another, in which Ron and Walter visit one of the older man’s former comrades-in-arm for some target practice after buying a few guns, is right-on, too. The script ratchets up the tension by cannily inserting a suggestion that the duo is being followed–which in turn leads to some frighteningly extreme reactions on Ohlinger’s part. There’s also an interview Kobeleski conducts with Walter’s ex-wife (the pitch-perfect Kate Williamson) that’s beautifully shaped and played. And on a more general level, the sense of co-dependency that the film builds between the two men is subtly and effectively rendered: each is using the other for very selfish reasons, and both prove to be villains, though in different ways. The gritty, faux-verité style contributes to things as well; with the frequent POV shots from the perspective of Ron’s camera, the picture comes to resemble a more cerebral, though equally mysterious, variant of “The Blair Witch Project.”

But there are drawbacks, particularly toward the close. Simply put, the conceit, while clever, proves difficult to sustain to feature length, and the attempt to provide the shaggy-dog story with a hugely surprising denouement misses the mark. From the point when Walter and Ron reach Washington in their peregrinations, the plot twists grow increasingly strained, and by the final wrap-up, the earlier air of perverse plausibility has dissipated.

Nonetheless, for most of the distance the picture provides a satisfyingly unsettling ride into the dark places of our national psyche. We don’t get many paranoid thrillers like “The Conversation” or “The Parallax View” (or even “Three Days of the Condor” or “All the President’s Men”) anymore–the imperfect “Arlington Road” (1999) was probably the best recent example. In spite of its disappointing final fifteen minutes, “Interview with the Assassin” is a nifty little addition to the genre.