MOVIE REVIEW
Micmacs (2009)
Bruno Calvo/Sony Pictures Classics
Bazil (Dany Boon) had the bad luck as a child to lose his father, a bomb disposal expert, in an accident with a land mine. Thirty years later, he has the bad luck to be shot in the head as a bystander to a drive-by shooting. Bazil eventually exits the hospital with nowhere to go and the bullet still in his brain, too dangerous to remove. On the streets of Paris, he soon encounters a fellow beggar, Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who takes him back to Micmacs, a shelter made entirely from salvaged goods beneath a Parisian underpass. There — with the cheerful assistance of the other homeless outcasts — he decides to orchestrate his revenge. That’s revenge against the C.E.O. of the manufacturer of the landmine (André Dussollier) that killed his father, and of the C.E.O. of the arms-dealing company (Nicolas Marié) that made the bullet in his head.