With “The Search,” Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius has shifted his focus from riffing on famous genres to making his most ambitious film to date. Chalk it up, perhaps, to him wanting to dig a little deeper than where he went with “The Artist,” and deeper than he’s ever gone in his career. This is his first real dive into a serious subject: the human rights abuses and mass murders that went on in Chechnya around 1999 at the hands of the Russians.
The story begins and ends with a clever and potent gimmick of sorts, but to say more would be too big a spoiler.