This film is a useful corrective for those who think that French cinema is inescapably urbane, intelligent and stylish. Counter-investigation is a shallow, nasty, derivative, clunking little film. Though its authenticity is widely trailed, the film's basic premise - that a police officer whose daughter has been raped and killed would subsequently be allowed to investigate the same crime as a miscarriage of justice - defies disbelief. Character development is jettisoned in favour of a nuts and bolts plot which delivers few pleasures. Men suffer, you know, when their children die; but they can get through it by squaring their jaws and drinking liquor. Paedophiles, well, they're clever, cold, and calculating. And evil, pretty much. The police, they'd do a fine job, if it weren't for bureaucrats. And liberals, especially. The film's ultimate message - that the only justice is old testament justice in a neatly defined world of good and evil - is as absurd as it is juvenile. One to miss.