- "Spilt blood doesn't dry."
22 Bullets is a 2010 French action thriller film.
Charly Mattei was one of France's premiere mob bosses, until he decided to retire. A few years later, a childhood friend of his who's still in the business shoots Charly 22 times. He survives somehow, and it's Roaring Rampage of Revenge time!
This film contains examples of:
- Agony of the Feet: Charly shoots Franck once in each foot while interrogating/torturing him at the drug processing house.
- Arch-Enemy: Charly has Tony Zacchia, his Evil Former Friend who nearly killed him.
- Big Bad: Tony Zacchia, the Evil Former Friend going after Charly.
- Dented Iron: Charly survives the assassination attempt but being shot 22 times still does serious damage to his body. His right arm sustained so much nerve damage that he has almost no feeling in it, making it useless for most normal tasks.
- The Dreaded: Charly is still a feared hitman after retiring and his survival just made him scarier. Tony tells a story about how Charly went through a whole other country just to rip the heart out of a drug dealer.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Tony embraces the evil of his life as a criminal but he still loves his family dearly. Most of the assassins have or had loved ones, Charly even kills one of them as he is walking his senile mother.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Charly is a ruthless murderer but there are lines he would never cross like attacking the families of his rivals or killing police officers. Tony has no such morals and when Charly retires, Tony quickly starts crossing those lines in his quest for power. As Tony grows more paranoid, he starts to fear that Charly will come out of retirement, discover what Tony has done and his conscience will not allow him to let Tony go unpunished. So Tony tries to preemptively kill Charly and thus triggers the main plot of the movie.
- Tony will give anyone smoking in his home a serious tongue lashing, because his kids live there and he is really wary of second hand smoking. He also decides to let one of his hitman enjoy his wedding night when he has reports of Charly being seen near one of his hideout.
- Le pistachier refuses to hurt Charly's son when the order is given.
- Evil Plan: Tony Zacchia seeks to kill his former boss so he can sell drugs without said boss's clout killing the operation.
- Faux Affably Evil: Tony and his assassins have family and loved ones to take care of and have somewhat camaraderie between each others. They are still cruel mobsters that will kill each other if one back down. Even Pascal is willing to make jokes and buy Bastien a brand new watch for his birthday after breaking his previous one.
- Finger in the Mail: Karim gets his severed hand sent to Charly after he finds out Tony was the one who tried to kill him.Rather than scare him it's what ultimately Charly to start his revenge as he was willing to forget about the assassination attempts out of old friendship.
- Get into Jail Free: While being chased by Zaccia's hit-squad, Charly deliberately crashes his motorbike into a police car to get himself arrested and away from the assassins.
- Hate Sink: Pascal Vassetto, the assassin who tried to kill Charly, is characterized entirely by his sadism. Aside from nearly killing him and actually killing his dog, Pascal cuts an informant's finger off and then feeds him to vicious dogs. He's then hired to kill Charly's young son, and kills a goon who refuses to help.
- In-Series Nickname: Charly is called "the Immortal" after surviving his perforation.
- Kick the Dog: Pascal Vassetto shoots Charly's dog when trying to kill him.
- Made of Iron: Charly survives being shot 22 times.
- The Old Convict: While in prison as a teenager, Charly had a mentor known as 'the Old Timer'. It was the Old Timer's murder that pushed Charly back into the underworld in order to extract revenge, and ultimately led to him becoming a mob boss.
- Orgy of Evidence: Discussed between Dolores and the chief of police that it makes no sense a professional like Mattei leave a gun that can be tracked to him on Malek's crime scene. The chief,being rather apathetic to everything, just say if criminals were smart they wouldn't be criminal and carry on the manhunt.
- Posthumous Character: The only reason Charly and Zacchia are in the crime business is because they were trained by a mob boss known as Old Timer, who's long dead by the story's start.
- Ransacked Room: When Tony Zacchia's mooks search lawyer Martin Beaudinard's office, they do a very thorough job: pulling all the law books off the shelves, breaking all the furniture, cutting open the cushions, and even slicing the artwork on the walls and smashing the frames.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A former mobster goes after his old gang after they try to assassinate him.
- Sadist: Pascal Vassetto, a hitman who dispatches his targets in the most brutal ways possible, such as feeding them to dogs, and doesn't think twice about murdering a child.
- Shovel Strike: The mook who balks at murdering Charly's young son hits Pascal—the one who gave him the order—over the back of the head with the shovel he was sent to fetch.
- Sickbed Slaying: A hitman sneaks into the hospital disguised as a doctor in an attempt to finish off Charly. However, because Charly has moved rooms,he winds up shooting some innocent who is now in Charley's old room.
- Straight Edge Evil: Mob boss Tony Zacchia tells off one of his underlings for smoking in his house.
- Tae Kwon Door: Charly repeatedly slams Pascal's head in a car door.
- To the Pain: Tony nonchalantly orders Charly's son to be cut in pieces then have the body dropped in front of his mom's house.
- Trojan Ambulance: Captain Goldman uses as an ambulance as a surveillance van to keep tabs on Charly while he is in the hospital.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Takes direct inspiration from the 1977 assassination attempt on French mobster Jacky Imbert, who also was shot 22 times and left paralyzed in his right arm.
