Though it might be known for being a country of peace and politeness, Canada has produced some of the most notorious serial killers the world has ever known. Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka, Clifford Olson, and Robert Pickton are a few that come to mind, but one killer you probably haven’t heard of is the subject of Raymond St-Jean’s new film, Dusk for a Hitman: Donald Lavoie. Active throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Lavoie was a self-proclaimed hit man based out of Montreal, Quebec, who assassinated at least 15 people under the guidance of mob boss Claude Dubois.

In a story straight out of a gangster film, Lavoie (played to perfection by actor Éric Bruneau) eventually learned that Dubois’ confidence in him had soured, turning the hunter into the hunted after a bounty was placed on his head. Lavoie sought refuge in the arms of the police, and in 1982 the cold-blooded killer agreed to flip on his former boss, leading to Claude Dubois serving 25 years in prison, and the disintegration of his notorious gang. For his part, Lavoie barely served any time at all, and was never convicted of the 15 murders he admitted to carrying out. Now in his 80s, he spends his twilight years under a new name, living the remainder of his life in Quebec.

MovieWeb recently sat down with Éric Bruneau to discuss how he went about preparing for his role as a real-life killer in Dusk for a Hitman. This included talking to some unsavory people who are no strangers to a life of crime.

Cracking the Code of Donald Lavoie
Dusk for a Hitman Release Date March 10, 2023 Director Raymond St-Jean Cast Éric Bruneau , Benoît Gouin , Rose-Marie Perreault , Sylvain Marcel , Simon Landry-Desy

While some actors who portray a real-life person are granted the ability to talk to their subject and learn about their motivations, such wasn’t the case for Éric Bruneau. Though he’d tried to seek out Lavoie in order to learn more about the man he’d be playing, his efforts proved fruitless, and instead Bruneau was able to talk to those still alive who knew Lavoie. It was these conversations, as well as those with law enforcement and psychologists, that informed his acting choices, and allowed him to dig deeper into the man Lavoie really was.

“I auditioned for the part and then COVID hit. So I had a year and a half to prep, and really try to meet people who were around Donald,” explained Bruneau, “so I met with some police officers, some psychologists, some gangsters from Montreal. So I was trying to crack the code to find out how I could connect with that guy who was a hit man.” He continued:

“But I didn’t want to play the cold-hearted hit man, and the more I was speaking with people, the more I discovered that all these guys were kind of self-medicating themselves a lot…
doing a lot of cocaine, drinking a lot, smoking a lot. And they all told me that they are always living in fear
, fear of being the next one to be killed, or of making a mistake. So I was trying to find a way to play fear without being a nervous wreck.”

Related 17 Coolest Movies with Hitmen and Assassins, Ranked There is something slick and intriguing about the ethically ambivalent hitman, which makes assassins utterly magnetic in the history of movies.

Fear is something audiences can easily connect with, and for Bruneau one of the other aspects of Lavoie’s character that he wanted to show was the unlikely emotion of love. “He’s someone who comes from violence. He got beat up when he was a kid, he got abandoned by his father,” says Bruneau. “So he was always trying to find another father. So when he was with Claude Dubois, that was his new father, and when they tried to kill him, he found a connection with McGinnis, the police officer. That’s why he became such a good informer.”

“So that was the thing…trying to get love. When you’re working with that kind of character,
you have to find a connection with the public
, and everybody needs love. Everybody needs approval. So that’s how I played Donald pretty much.”

Tapping into the Emotions of a Narcissist

In 1983, Donald Lavoie appeared on the Canadian news program The Fifth Estate for one of his only on-camera interviews in which he may or may not have been under the influence of drugs. Tapping into the emotions of such a complex individual was a bit of a challenge for Bruneau, because the public never really saw the real Donald Lavoie. In the end, the actor believes he was motivated by three things: power, ego, and money, but says it isn’t his job to judge anyone.

“He’s interesting, because he’s so complex. So you never really know why he did it. But I think that he did it for power, for ego, and for money, and then he realized he was trapped.
But he’s a really smart guy, you know, he’s still alive, and he should have died like five times
. But he’s always been able to navigate the world in such a smart way. Acting wise, I was trying not to judge him.”

Related 20 Recent Crime Thrillers You Probably Missed There are plenty of exciting crime thrillers from the past few years worth checking out, such as Holy Spider and and Emily the Criminal.

Some who have watched Lavoie’s interview on The Fifth Estate believe that Lavoie was indeed under the influence of something at the time, making it difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction. Bruneau relied on his own instincts to build the character of Lavoie in the movie, as well as the direction of Raymond St-Jean.

“He’s a narcissist for sure. And I think in the interview that you’re talking about, I think that he was under some substance. So we don’t really know, because I’ve watched those tapes with police officers and psychologists and everyone was just like, ‘Yeah, he’s not himself.’ So you can’t take that as the real guy. I had to create him, and build a character with the other actors and the director.”

Finding the Depths of a Real-Life Character

Éric Bruneau is no stranger to playing real-life characters. The actor appeared in the film Goalie as famed Canadian hockey player Marcel Pronovost, and will be portraying Leonard Cohen’s cousin in the upcoming series So Long, Marianne. With an enigmatic figure such as Donald Lavoie where the lines between fact and fiction are heavily blurred, Bruneau didn’t rely so much on mannerisms and speech patterns, so much as he did what was already in the script written by Martin Girard, and Raymond St-Jean.

“I was lucky because Donald [Lavoie] is not like if I was playing Donald Trump or Justin Trudeau, a figure that’s really well known. So I had some room to be able to create a character, because when you do biopics, then you got to walk and talk and do the whole thing of what the public knows about the figure. I think it’s harder. But for me,
the depth of the character was in the story itself
. So that’s why I really enjoyed it.”

Dusk for a Hitman premiered at the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma film festival in 2023, and was released in Canada on March 10 that same year. You can catch Éric Bruneau’s stunning performance when the film makes its way to VOD platforms in the United States on April 19, 2024, courtesy of Saban Films.