A middle-aged gangster with the deceptively nice and normal name of Gustave (or "Gu") escapes from prison and returns to his habitual environment, to wit the environment of heavy-duty professional crime. He arrives bang in the middle of a gang war involving a number of old friends, enemies and frenemies. Gu is about to become both actor and pawn in a series of elaborate cat-and-mouse games pitting gangsters against police and gangsters against gangsters.
An excellent movie, both elegant and incisive, with a prize cast and prize performances. I don't know if it's realistic - kind Fate has kept me far, far from the world of French gangsterdom - but it certainly feels and sounds realistic : one gets a genuine sense of watching people for whom serious violence is not only a career, an heritage and a belief system, but also an automatic mindset. The atmosphere hangs as heavy as cigarette smoke and the dialogues are so sharp that you could use them to cut your hair. The sets and locations have been chosen with enormous care, conjuring up visions of prosperous yet tacky nightclubs, near-convincing imitations of "bourgeois" respectability or once happy family homes turned into hiding places for criminals on the run, like women of a good background fallen upon hard times and forced into street-walking.
Riveting, addictive viewing.
An excellent movie, both elegant and incisive, with a prize cast and prize performances. I don't know if it's realistic - kind Fate has kept me far, far from the world of French gangsterdom - but it certainly feels and sounds realistic : one gets a genuine sense of watching people for whom serious violence is not only a career, an heritage and a belief system, but also an automatic mindset. The atmosphere hangs as heavy as cigarette smoke and the dialogues are so sharp that you could use them to cut your hair. The sets and locations have been chosen with enormous care, conjuring up visions of prosperous yet tacky nightclubs, near-convincing imitations of "bourgeois" respectability or once happy family homes turned into hiding places for criminals on the run, like women of a good background fallen upon hard times and forced into street-walking.
Riveting, addictive viewing.