Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

All things being equal, the movie antagonist you can recognize from real life is scarier than the one who's merely an exaggeration, or a grounds-up fabrication. It's far more disturbing to think that you might run into the villain at work the next day, or at the grocery store, or in rush hour traffic. Understanding that the evil forces in a movie are as real as the ground beneath your feet decreases the amount of work you have to do to relate to the main character’s plight, and makes it easier for you to say, “Hey, that could happen to me!” Which, as anyone will tell you, is a strategic advantage for any storyteller.

With a Friend Like Harry (the original French title is Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien, which translates literally to Harry, a friend who wants you good), which has won four César awards (the French equivalent of Oscars), including the Best Actor award for Sergi López, and competed for the Palme D'Or at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an ordinary put-upon young family man named Michel (Laurent Lucas), who runs into an old high school classmate named Harry (López) while traveling with his wife and daughters to the family summer home. Through circumstance and the constraints of politeness, Harry establishes himself on the periphery of Michel's family, and slowly works his way in.

Harry is a well-dressed, square-shaped, imposing gentleman who may not understand the finer points of social etiquette – or he may understand them all to well. He stares and smiles with an almost perverse, knowing pleasure. He observes that Michel’s current situation, and his life, contains many undesirable elements, and he expresses a sincere desire to help. Moreover, Harry has an overwhelming desire to straighten creases, clear away spots, and smooth over bumps. Unfortunately, Harry’s perfectionism extends into psychosis, and if the bumps he smoothes over happen to be human lives, it’s of little consequence to him.

Dominik Moll’s film, which he wrote with Gilles Marchand (who in turn cowrote the acclaimed Human Resources) owes a great deal to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and that film’s mutated progeny (What About Bob?, Throw Momma from the Train, Chuck & Buck), but Harry has unexpected, pleasurable differences. Harry isn’t a geek – he’s financially well-off, has a sexy girlfriend, and probably has many friends within his social circle. What unnerves us, even before the first victim, is the fact that whatever chemical the human brain produces to allow us to become embarrassed, to recognize a person’s off-limits territory, Harry comes up short. His deficit isn’t great enough to beget absurd comic situations, but it’s more than enough to make us chuckle uncomfortably, and for our neck-hairs to stand on end.

Moll plays other games with "almost" and "not quite" - Harry's victims don't really deserve their fates, and when they are still alive, the writers toy with our responses to them by carefully evoking audience sympathy, annoyance, and repulsion. (The result is that we feel like accomplices in their departures, but we're denied the usual vicarious thrill.) Michel is no saint, either, and while his wife is a nagging harpy, she also loves her husband and becomes concerned with his well-being when she feels Harry is not quite the good samaritan that his image suggests.

The Spanish-born López carries the role of Harry in his pocket, and the movie is (to no one's surprise) his. He's the first actor I've ever seen who's been able to create a character who's both a nuisance and a joy to watch - his smug/contented/warm smile is fit to be etched on a coin or to provide the backing for a dart board.

Which makes the film's conclusion, which is logical but perhaps too preordained by the narrative's Hitchcockian schematic, a small disappointment. Moll and Marchand sacrifice a golden opportunity to study this strange bird outside its natural suspense-thriller habitat for the sake of justice and the development of the hero, who's far less interesting than the villain. Nevertheless, Harry steps outside of Hitch's shadow often enough to make it a worthwhile experience.



Recommended: Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older