The best Gérard Depardieu’s thriller movies

A veteran-turned-mercenary is hired to take a young woman with a secret from post-apocalyptic Eastern Europe to New York City.

In danger of losing his business, Anthony Roca, an ordinary man, develops a scam that will become the heist of the century. Overtaken by the crime, he will have to deal with betrayal, murder and settling.

Jacques Mesrine, a loyal son and dedicated soldier, is back home and living with his parents after serving in the Algerian War. Soon he is seduced by the neon glamour of sixties Paris and the easy money it presents. Mentored by Guido, Mesrine turns his back on middle class law-abiding and soon moves swiftly up the criminal ladder.

The film takes place in Paris, where two cops are competing for the vacant seat of chief of police while in the middle of a search for a gang of violent thieves. The movie is directed by Olivier Marchal, a former police officer who spent 12 years with the French police before creating this story, which is taken in part from real facts that happened during the 1980s in France.

Paris, 1830. In the heart of the town, Vidocq, a famous detective, disappears as he fights the Alchemist, an assassin that he has been pursuing for a few months. His young biographer, Etienne Boisset, decides to avenge Vidocq's death and takes the investigation on...

Paris, December. A conductor of a choir is found mysteriously murdered, with burst eardrums. Lionel Kasdan, a police inspertor the verge of retirement, and Frank Salek, an official of Interpol, embark together on a hunt for the killer, and also to a secret organization specializing in kidnapping children.

A cop goes up against his lifelong friend, who has become one of the city's biggest drug traffickers.

Onoff is a famous writer, now a recluse. The Inspector is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. In an isolated, rural police station, the Inspector tries to establish the events surrounding a killing, to reach a startling resolution.

Christmas Eve in Paris. Leo Zimmerman is a businessman who lives for his beloved little daughter’s smile. Outwardly, his life is exemplary. However, when Dimitri Kopas walks into his office, pretending to be a normal client, Leo understands that a contract is out on his head and that the young man has come to town to kill him. Overcome with anxiety and paranoia, no longer able to sleep, Leo decides to meet the killer face to face and to broker a strange deal.

A dockworker seeking revenge on the killer of his sister finds himself the object of desire for two women.

A con man travels to Cambodia (also on the run from law enforcement in the U.S.) to collect his share in an insurance scam, but discovers more than he bargained for

Everyone has a secret. Twins Sarah and Gaëlle near 25; for ten years, Sarah has been a fundamentalist Carmelite in a Brazilian convent, and Gaëlle has been in prison for a heinous crime. Sarah comes to the attention of Fr. Joachim, a priest and physician; he can find no cause for her debilitating abdominal pain. When Sarah and he are transferred to Paris, Joachim looks for Gaëlle, now on probation and finding no respite from society's approbation. An enterprising reporter is digging into Gaëlle's life, the mother superior of Sarah's convent hovers over her, and Joachim investigates the phenomenon of twin's symmetry. Is there any release from the past?

In 1880s London, pornographic bookseller Verloc is a double agent for the Russian government, providing information to Chief Inspector Heat about a lazy anarchist organization. In order for the anarchists to be arrested, an act of terrorism must occur. So Verloc decides to set up bombs – which leads to tragedy – not only for himself but also for his family, including wife Winnie and brother-in-law, Stevie.

This deftly made French psychological thriller terrifies with its exploration of an experiment gone horribly wrong. Dr. Marc Lacroix, a psychiatrist specializing in brain functions, is obsessed with the link between mind and spirit. To find his link he studies the criminally insane. He builds a secret machine, known only to his mistress Marianne, in which he hopes to exchange minds between humans. He simultaneously wants to help the mentally ill recover, and he wants to experience their madness. He chooses the psychotic killer, Zyto, a man who stabbed at least three women, for his experiment. The initial experiment is successful and the two exchange minds. But trouble ensues when Zyto refuses to reverse the switch. There is little Marc can do when Zyto takes over Marc's life, and more ominously his wife and child whom are unknowingly in mortal danger. Marc, encased in Zyto's body, is returned to the asylum. Will Marc's wife recognize the danger? Will Zyto kill again?

A woman falls in love with the man who killed her former boyfriend.

After spending seven years in jail for an art heist, Frenchman Victor Lambert returns to Moscow to uncover the circumstances behind his son Jeremy's brutal murder. He is backed by his lover Alexandra, and by his ex-partner-in-crime, choreographer Souliman.

French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.