The flower with the gun
In The GardenerSerge Shuster is a high-ranking civil servant running for a ministerial post from his villa. He shares his pitiful existence with a girl whose one and only hobby is bawling in the garden, a woman who criticizes him for not doing enough, and a baby who already has tinnitus. His relative tranquility is disturbed when a commando forces entry to his home in order to eliminate him. Or at least in order to put him to sleep before letting the real bad guys try to kill him. That’s without counting the… gardener on duty, a discreet old man with heavy liabilities..
In the hands of lovers of the genre, the bogus scenario of Gardener could have made a nice action comedyoffering his repentant ex-thug a range of pruning shears and other hoes to dig out the jugular of these stupid intruders. Especially since the action takes place almost exclusively in the villa and its gardens, a veritable labyrinth of cutthroats, and the emphasis is placed on the confrontations.
Except that in addition to the rate of violence a bit higher than the average allowed by SVoD, it is obviously a television product in line with Last Mercenarywhere the most important thing remains not the action or the humor, but the headliners. Comic timing matters less than their histrionics, the intensity of the action sequences less than their reputation, and overall consistency less than awkward cameos.
At the edge of the daisies
Impossible, obviously, to blame a slightly tired Van Damme, but sincere in his desire for self-deprecation. On the other hand, his character being presented as the archetype of the mute action-man who knows how to do everything, the screenwriters felt obliged to give him a counterpoint in the person of Michaël Youn, responsible therefore for filling the slightest sound space with his jeremiads.
-Systematically explaining orally the rare sketches of a successful gag or the numerous references to American action cinema, he sends their duo to hall of fame unbearable couples and their film in the pantheon of buddy-movies which make you want to see one of the protagonists massacre the other. As for the gang of bad guys, made up of a gentle Kaaris, a racist Ragnar the Breton Kakihara version and an under-exploited Jérôme Le Banner, it’s hard to see with his outdated running gag.
The trombinoscope therefore undermines almost every aspect of the feature film, starting of course with the real martial ambitions, already detectable in The Last Mercenary. If most of these generic French comedies, intended to occupy the streaming equivalent of an M6 prime-time (the home page) before sinking into the (very) back catalog, generally only inspire indifference, in this case we can speak of a great waste.
Between this type of projects which are multiplying on Prime and the Werewolves of Netflix, it is certain that the framework inherited from the most cynical terrestrial channels has not gone out of fashion. On the contrary, he still has a bright future ahead of him, on television or on SVoD services. Today, turnips grow in every vegetable garden.
