Killing Zoe is Generation X s first bank caper movie, an ultra-violent screamfest about a soft-spoken American who gets involved with a gang of drugcrazed Parisian thieves and blunders into a hostage situation. It must have been even more exhausting to make this film than it is to watch it. But it s made with a kind of manic joy that makes me suspect its writer-director, Roger Roberts Avary, might develop into a considerable filmmaker, once he thinks of something to say.
The movie stars Eric Stoltz as Zed, a shaggy-haired American safecracking expert who met the Frenchman Eric (Jean-Hughes Anglade) during a student exchange program. They have remained fast friends since those carefree school days, when they robbed minimarts together, and now Zed has flown to Paris to open the safe of the bank Eric plans to rob.