Runtime: 99 minutes
Directed by: Romain Gavras
Starring: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassani Embarek, Alexis Manenti
From: Netflix
A movie I never knew much about until “play” was hit last night. All I knew before it was added to my Netflix queue a few days ago was that it had an opening 10 or so minutes everyone loved. Somehow, what this was actually about never passed by my eyes, whether it be Letterboxd reviews or other media. I was perfectly content with this scenario, BTW. It was messageboard chatter which reminded me that there are several recent French action pictures that are on various streaming platforms; as this qualifies as one of those…
The opening 10 minutes was indeed as glorious as I had heard. The movie is shot in long unbroken takes (whether simulated or not) yet tricks were utilized to make the start of the picture look to be seamless as several characters are introduced who play a key role in the proceedings. To try and be vague yet reveal more than I ever found out beforehand, the action is set in a fictitious Parisian neighborhood as there is civil unrest over a young boy being killed by police.
At least in the United States, the past few years there have been HUGE moments where police brutality happened-sometimes resulting in death-and riots occurred. Like in the United States, race and ethnicity plays a part; here, it is a neighborhood full of minorities, plenty of them Algerian who are Muslim. This is the scenario here, except that it just so happened the boy’s older brothers are all involved in this conflict, albeit in vastly different ways. Indeed, it is different from the civil unrest that has happened in Paris the past several weeks-as of this review-over the government deciding without Parliament’s input to raise the retirement age.
The first two acts are a lot of fun as the tension escalates and we see the various parties-including a member of the French National Police attempting to squash the rebellion. The action is quite thrilling and while one key player seemed like a caricature too often, overall this was pretty badass between the plot, the characters, the sometimes bombastic score, & the overall operatic vibe. Then, the final act happened…. Several narrative choices were made & more than one modern movie-making trope which I don’t like was present. One day I should find a way to elaborate on those but those already familiar w/ this movie will know what one of those tropes was. It left me deflated and is a crying shame as even with the final act this is still better than many of the Netflix original titles out there.
It is entirely unfair to expect director Romain Gavras to match the career of his famous father; hopefully if he continues to make more feature films instead of music videos for artists I abhor, he can stick the landing and avoid those bad tropes to create a memorable experience I can give a full endorsement to and not something like this, which has quite the noteworthy first hour then the rest peters out to a not entirely satisfying conclusion.
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