The Crimson Rivers

The Crimson Rivers French Les Rivires Pourpres is a 2000 French psychological horror film starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. The film, which was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, is based on the bestselling novel Les Rivires Pourpres. Its screenplay was cowritten by the books author, JeanChristophe Grang.

Detective Superintendent Commissaire Principal Pierre Niemans Jean Reno, an investigator well known in Paris, is sent to the small rural university town of Guernon in the French Alps to investigate a brutal murder. The victims body is found bound in the fetal position and suspended high on a cliff face, his eyes removed and his hands cut off. Niemans learns that the victim was a professor and the Universitys librarian, Remy Callois, and he seeks out a local ophthalmologist for an explanation to the removal of the eyes. Dr. Cherneze, once on the University staff, explains that the schools isolation led to inbreeding amongst the professors, with increasingly serious genetic disorders. Recently the trend has reversed, with the local village children becoming ill and the college babies remaining healthy. Cherneze hints that the killer is leaving Niemans clues to their motive by removing the body parts that are unique to each individual the eyes and hands. Niemans questions the Dean and examines the librarians apartment, where he finds images of athletic supermen juxtaposed with texts on genetic deformities. The Deans assistant and son Hubert translates the title of Callois Ph.D. thesis as, We are the masters. We are the slaves. We are everywhere. We are nowhere. We control the crimson rivers.Coincidentally Detective Inspector Lieutenant de Police Max Kerkerian Vincent Cassel is in the nearby town of Sarzac investigating the desecration of the grave of Judith Herault, a girl who died in 1982, and the theft of her photos from the local primary school. The girl was killed in a horrific highway accident, witnessed by her mother, who was so traumatized she took a vow of darkness in a nunnery. The mother tells Kerkerian that when Judith was ten she fell ill, and they went to get help in Guernon where she was born she claims they were then attacked by demons and, when they fled, her daughter was killed in the road accident. She says the pictures were stolen to erase her

Source: Wikipedia