Surrounded by corruption, a seemingly incompetant police cheif (Philippe Noiret, Cinema Paradiso, The Judge and the Assassin) decides to wipe the slate clean with a killing spree of his own. This Oscar-nominated black comedy ranks with the best film adaptaions of Jim Thompson's pulp fiction (The Grifters, The Getaway). By changing the locale of Thompson's Pop. 1280 from the American South to Africa circa 1938, acclaimed director Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight, A Sunday in the Country) doubles the decadence. The blazing Senegal sun sheds a blistering light on the French colonials' small-minded cruelties and sordid sexuality. Between visits to his sultry mistress (Isabelle Huppert, Entre Nous), the inscrutable cop wages a chilling personal war, matching evil with evil.