Walter Hill, Matz & Jef Stray Bullets

Original language: French

Original title: Lost bullets

Year of publication: 2015

Translation: Gema Moraleda García

Valuation: between recommendable and okay

I suppose, I hope, I LIKE TO THINK that I won’t need to explain who Walter Hill is, but if only for completing this review In response to a hypothetical and improbable person who does not know him (read in a disappointed tone) I will comment: Walter Hill is a living legend (for now and for many years, now that another monster of entertainment cinema has left us, Roger Corman) of American cinema, especially action, director of great titles of the genre such as The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort, The Long Ryders, 48 ​​Hour Limit, Handsome Johnny, Crossroads, etc. and producer and/or screenwriter of other even more legendary films, such as the saga Alien…

Now, what does this filmmaker with a deep-rooted and celebrated career have to do with the world of comics or, to be more exact, with that of Comic? Well, it turns out that during the promotion of the film A bullet in the head, directed by him, but based on a comic by French screenwriter Matz (Alexis Nolent), he asked Hill if, in turn, he wouldn’t keep a script in his desk drawer that could be transferred to vignettes. The filmmaker responded that a lot of them, among others this one Lost Bullets, which he had written 30 years before. As a result of this collaboration, Matz got to work together with the illustrator Jef (Jean-François Martínez) and the result, after a few years, was this comic or black-graphic novel that we review today (they would later repeat the experience with Body and soul), quite a lesson in noir more classic although, without a doubt, – based on a script by Walter Hill it could not be otherwise -, quite leaning towards the hardboiled.

Synopsis of the story: in the era of Prohibition, a guy in a suit arrives in a small town in Arizona in a luxurious car, looking for the owner of the bar, in order to pay off a certain debt… Only the guy in a suit is Roy Nash, a relentless murderer who, until recently, was serving a sentence in a Chicago jail, from where he has escaped with the help of the Mafia, in exchange, yes, for carrying out a multiple settling of scores for them. (*) His next stop will be Los Angeles, where Roy will also try to find his old love, Lena, the real reason for his escape and search.

As anyone can imagine, history is full of tough guys like Peredenal, villains badder than scabies, and women as beautiful as a dream. wet… Furthermore, both Jef’s elegant lines and his panoramic composition of the vignettes and the careful setting stand out, thanks in large measure to the successful use of photographic transfer and a most appropriate color palette, especially in the part that takes place in Arizona.

I’m not going to deceive you either: this graphic novel – and I suppose Hill’s original script – is more of a recreation or even a tribute to the most classic film noir than a story that provides an original point of view to the genre, but still , I have no doubt that lovers of noir, polar and comics, in general, will have a great time with it. After all, it carries the quality seal of a legend…

(*) This first part has an aftertaste of a film directed by Hill in 1996, The last man o Last Man Standing (or maybe it’s the other way around, since his Stray Bullets script is older).