Crime Insiders (2007)

'Truands' as it is named in French, somehow passed unnoticed and has been disregarded by audience. Simply said, people just do not know about it. But from many angles, this movie is a great piece of cinema, in the likes of other 'new, dark & violent' french movies. If there was a proper story telling component, it would be easily comparable to the Melville's cinema: deep dive in the criminal underworld and its ramifications; nightlife and violence, switching alliance and evolving relations of criminals competing for power.And this is what it is about: the struggle of a boss to maintain its position on top, while fighting back challengers and suffering from a decadent organization. The figurehead of this clan - Claude - is greatly portrayed - as a dangerous megalomaniac. Its protégée, soon to be its own 'brutus' is brilliantly played by Magimel. Violence is omnipresent and could be a bit overwhelming sometime. The movie could have won by showing less and suggesting more: it leaves a 'print' that divert from the story. Story that searched itself for some time before one of the thread is followed up till the end. The lack of rhythm is disorientating and montage - after a great first 20 min - lacks imagination. I still like and have seen this movie multiple times. The atmosphere of crime and the presentation of the protagonists are excellent, the exploration of nightly and forbidden Paris is also attractive. A clearer script, a bit of aesthetic work could have made a much classer movie about the fall of a Crime boss. I still give a 8 out of 10 for the entertainment and the courageous project (it s a bit rare if French Feature films nowadays) On a similar topic of crime boss fall, I recommend ''Le Second Soufflé''.

Bad acting (philippe Caubere acts like Michel Constantin on a bad day...), cheap violence and torture (did they really need to glorify the act of drilling a hole through a kneecap, are we supposed to enjoy this?), no plot - just mean bad guys (if this was part of providing young audiences with role models I believe the director should be sued, these models are not going to give any good ideas to youngsters... ).There are much better contemporary French films around, this was just a pathetic "kill bill" try à la française, and even so, it misses the point.If you want good french stuff with suspense, violence, tough guys and a fine plot, look for "MR 73" or "36 quai des orfèvres"

Paris Lockdown: this one-man army of a wet paper bag of poor excuses of a wannabe gangster film, this is as empty as a crêpe Suzette in a nunnery on a Sunday morning. As rich as poor taste goes, yes there's boobs, bottoms and nodding heads galore but takeaway the sleaze, the flying bullets and the flash cars then all we have done is landed on the square that tells us to "Go Back To GO, do not collect £200...start again".This is as deep and meaningful as gutters will allow it to rise, while an insight of Parisian lowlife drug smugglers, pimps and killers, there is just nothing to add to the narrative. Nothing. The characters are living the life of a one-dimensional caricature. We are given a so-called gang leader who simply is not memorable, and his pet dogs are just as easily put-down and unmissable as the whole sorry affair.The entire episode here seems too have been pulled out of any sequence in their life, it is a Soap Opera of blood and thugs. This is a basic rise and fall of a Paris crime boss who lives his life whoring, shooting and, again, shooting. The development of these people is as far as your next bus stop to Plainville, even the Robert De Niro look-alike and his greased-up hair looks too pastiche, too…already done.Frédéric Schoendoerffer, director, has placed the action in the seedy side of town, the bars, strip joints and night filled streets of Paris, France, Europe and to be fair, any self respecting Parisian gangster seeing this sad debunkle would be, allegedly, embarrassed.With just a touch of bewilderment, this crime-caper has no direction apart from up. It is not a poorly made film, it's, forgive the pun, executed well, nice offensive language, great looking girls and mean mothers' doing their job, only too well. Some nice, forgive the pun, once more, location shots and bad attitudes, the odd torture sequence, done very nicely too, ouch. However, it is the putting together of this work that to make any coherent sense a plot, let alone a sub-plot would have been acceptable.These guys are hard-core but when the spotlight of the good-cop, bad-cop is shining on their sorry backside, it is the whole main feature that will give the game away and get you busted, sent-down and sent to solitary

"Truands" is a movie I love because it destroys all the clichés gangster movies usually give us. Rise and fall of thugs, features where violence keeps close to romance,and where main characters are nevertheless sympathetic for the audience. And when they die, the same audience suffer in the inside. See "Scarface", for example...With "Truands", except some scenes where there are dialogs taken from "Scarface" - such as "You think you can f...me?!!!" "Nobody f...me!!!"..., everything is different from other pictures. There is no trace of sympathetic character. And of course no humor at all. Nothing to do with Tarantino. Every one is Absolutely nasty at possible. Every one. It's disgusting. If you wait for some moral or ethic, you'll puke all over the joint...No emotion either. Debauchery, treason and slaughter. Baths of blood all over the movie. Bullets, buck shots 00, riot guns, M 16....All the details for "Truands". In summary the real underworld.The character played by Benoit Magimel is absolutely out of his usual ones. Angel face Magimel is here a ruthless murderer, a professional killer. He and his buddy Olivier Marchall played a duo of killers which reminds me some American classic...----------BEWARE SPOILERS-------------------------And there is no end. Life goes on for the nasty ones.But I love that.It changes.