Black (III) (2015) User Reviews

Shakespeare in Brussels

[rubenm · 6/10 · 26 November 2015]

'Yes, I read books by Shakespeare', says a young gang member jokingly when he is interrogated by the police. Without doubt, this scene in 'Black' is meant as a little innuendo. The film is the latest cinematographic adaptation of Shakespeare's play 'Romeo and Juliet'.

'Black' is set in Brussels, where territories are divided between Moroccan street gangs and rival gangs of black Africans. When Moroccan teenager Marwan is waiting in the police station after having been arrested for theft, he meets the pretty African girl Mavela, who is caught for the same reason. They exchange telephone numbers, and start an affair. Because they are members of different gangs, this is enough reason for an exchange of violent attacks by the gangs. Several girls are gang raped or forced to participate in holdups, the boys organize gang fights.

The film is very fast-paced and dynamic, capturing the inner city gang life with dark, sinister images and impressive establishing shots, making Brussels look like an urban jungle not much different from the Bronx or Compton.

But beneath this succession of beautiful shots, there is not much substance. The screenplay doesn't contain much suspense because everyone knows the Romeo and Juliet storyline. The dialogue consists mostly of four letter words. The characters are mostly one-dimensional. All white cops are sadistic racists, all black men are heartless macho's, all girls are sexy and submissive. The film makers miss the opportunity to develop interesting characters, like Mina, a policewoman of Moroccan descent. We never learn how she copes with being hated by members of her own ethnic group.

In view of the Paris attacks of November 13th, the film has an interesting extra dimension. The Moroccan street gang is named '1080', which is the zip code for Molenbeek, the quarter in Brussels where the atrocities were being prepared and planned. You can't help but think that Marwan could just as well have been one of the attackers.

Another interesting thing are the subtle references to Belgian linguistic squabbles. From time to time, Marwan and Mavela switch from French to Dutch, but purely in a mocking way. They hate the Flemish policemen who address them in Dutch, and when Marwan tells his imprisoned brother that he wants to start a legitimate garage business, he is accused of being 'Flemish'. Knowing that both directors are from Flanders, this is a nice pun.

Contemporary Romeo and Juliet

[excavator · 8/10 · 27 June 2016]

Black is a dark and fast paced movie about a black African girl and a Moroccan boy who fall in love. While Romeo and Juliet centered around the love between two people from feuding families, Black turns this lovestory into a very current and global racial issue. In addition, the romanticism of the story is completely overshadowed by the grim reality and violence that come with life in a gang. However, no matter how well executed the movie is, that's it as far as content goes: a love story and violence. The two main characters are the only one's that are slightly developed, the rest are mainly a means to an end story wise. I would definitely recommend this movie because it's a very well made contemporary movie, but if you're expecting elaborate story lines and many in-depth characters, you might not enjoy this one 100%.

What a surprise !

[Zi4n96m4 · 7/10 · 25 October 2022]

This movie was a surprise to me. I hooked up with the characters straight away and immediately understood what "mood" I had to immerse myself in! The actors are good, the direction is incredible and the script is super balanced for this kind of film. A balance has been found so that it is original and trend-setting at different levels. Despite the fact that this kind of film often quickly falls into the cliché, the director knew how to denounce a reality without falling into the cliché. The ending really captivated me, I didn't know what ending to expect and what fate awaited the young lovers. Film to see and promote !

Brussels' an underworld love story.

[Reno-Rangan · 6/10 · 23 May 2016]

It is a Belgian version of the film adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. But it is modernised and gangsterised crime-drama-romance. Sets in the present Brussels about the two black rivalry gangs, their dispute heats up further after discovering one of the members from each gang has fallen in love. In a result an ultimate gang fight undertakes and what comes after that is we all know it.

This is the most harsh version of the most beautiful romance tale. I meant not violently, though there are many fight sequences, but sexual contents were too strong. If you are a fan of the original work, then you might dislike the film. Because the portrayal of Juliet was so unpleasant which is realistic to the real underworld. But if you are a welcoming type, for the updated classical stories, then you will appreciate the effort. Yet it is more a gangster film than the romance. That's why the title is very simple that does not reveal about the influence of 'Romeo and Juliet', unless you read it somewhere else like the film's synopsis and trivia or the reviews.

Except it sets in the Belgian capital city, the actors, the directors all are not what I expected. I mean it does not give the Dutch/Flemish atmosphere, but like it happens in the middle-east. Since the focus was on the underworld gangs, all the film characters were African immigrants of mostly first and second generation, but the two different regional races, the Moroccans and the black Africans. The first half was not good as I hoped for, but got better after the most waited romance parts were emerged.

"You were born here, but you're still different. You will always be a foreigner."

I did not get the 'Romeo and Juliet' vibe for this film, because it was not actually a revised version, but it roughly borrowed the original plot and nothing much. So you shouldn't anticipate like the story you have known to appear in this film's scenes. From all this, one thing you have to keep in mind before choosing it to watch is that it is not a family or the children friendly film, especially not a date movie.

I did not dislike it, but it should have been even better than the overall product. The actors were good and the production quality was much better. The story wise, this film holds no secrets or the twist, because we all know how it begins and ends, but the screen presentation was different with altered scenes and the characters including the locations. So there's more to talk about the filmmaking than the story, except how different it is compared to the Shakespeare's original narrative.

This film is one of those where I wanted to like it and rate it better, but I can't for some reasons. The original was a love tragedy that connected with two feuded families, but this film became an ethnic issue that is not welcomed for the present world's condition. For the art of filmmaking, it was a fine piece of work and for the entertainment's sake, it is under acceptable limit, but for the morality what a film teaches these days' youngsters is a mislead.

All the above, realism wins, because it looks like inspired by the real gang rivalries around the Brussels. To come to end on this kind of opinion only after I saw the film's end report that came before the credits. So it is a good film, well, mostly decent, that's what I think, but opinions differ from person to person. I am not suggesting it, but you may try it to learn what's yours. And finally the end credit song was good.

6½/10

My only love sprung from my only hate.......

[FlashCallahan · 9/10 · 18 August 2016]

Worlds collide when Mavela, a teenage girl with ties to Brussels' Black Bronx gang, meets Marwan, a member of a rival Moroccan gang, at a police station, after they have both been arrested for theft.

Aware of the consequences of getting involved with someone from another gang, they at first resist their attraction to one another, but they can only resist for so long.

Just when they've started to imagine a different life for themselves, a terrifying incident reminds Mavela where she belongs.......

From the plot summary, you'll instantly recognise it as Romeo & Juliet, which this film is loosely based upon. But bear in mind this isn't Baz Lurhmann's world, so don't expect The Cardigans to be playing over the fairy tale-esque cinematography.

This is far beyond the realms of the star cross'd lovers, and even though the fundamental story arc involving the two lovers is basically the Bard gone bad, this is a gritty urban nightmare with much similarities to City Of God, and in some instances, The Warriors.

And while each film in this obscure sub-genre is quite unique and gives you something to sit up and take notice at, they have one predictable trope they all share, it won't end well....

It's a hard watch, from beginning to end, and despite moments of levity between the lovers, the film has an abundance of despair evident.

It's a grimy film, oozing with dirt, anger, and hatred. And although barely any of the characters are likable, you cannot help but pity them and their families.

Yes, they are striking fear into the locals, laughing at the police, but one occurrence can change the way these people feel about walking the street, and it does, my word does an occurrence happen in this film.

It's not a film that you can watch with ease, it's asks many taboo questions, but never gives the answer that you desire.....there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

It's a gripping urban nightmare, and although there are despicable acts depicted, it's an important movie, and should be seen.

Less Romeo and Juliet and more like Orpheus and Eurydice

[missraze · 7/10 · 15 April 2017]

Orpheus is already with a woman, but leaves her without giving her an official reason, and travels to the underworld literally, to get Eurydice back as doom follows her and death is inevitable, while Orpheus's ex patrols in envy and finally causes them both to fall. It's not Romeo and Juliet at all, who even thought of that? When you watch this film, you will see my summary of Orpheus and Eurydice matches way more than R&J.

This film also needs to be named Gangs instead. It isn't about being black, it's about being a gang member. Japanese gangs gang rape each other, Chinese, Indian, the British gang rape each other, French, Italian, Russian, Hispanic...every race and country has its underworld and there will be rapes. So the opening scene is annoyingly offensive and inaccurate to show a girl being raped by a gang while rap music ("black" music) is playing, as the title Black appears on the screen. It singles out black men as rapists and that women are prey to black men. The film also shows a one-sided, demonising look at gang culture: the black gang. It doesn't show the antics and crimes of the Moroccan/Flemish gang throughout the film like it showed the black gang life. But if you use some critical thinking you will see the real villains here are the racists that shove blacks and foreigners in a corner, pressuring them to resent and therefore to go against each other.

Nothing about this film is about being black except Marwan's racist friends and family towards black people. And it's actually what sets off the closing scene, which did make me cry. But I probably would've cried if it was two white teens in this same setting that the film was shot (very nicely, by the way, must say). Because it's a shame. You want to love someone and stupid people you know tear you apart for dumb reasons. The Moroccan and Brussels racism is what causes the fateful sticky end for the two lead roles because if it wasn't for Marwan's ex girlfriend a white girl jealously pitting Marwan and his new black girlfriend and her gang against each other, then the other half of the movie would've never happened. You will see. So it's not that Marwan and Mavela are wrong for loving each other, it's that Marwan's friends are seedy assholes, and his brother was mad because he was with a black girl. Exacerbating the rage, however, are the ills of the gang Mavela is a part of. But that's because they're a gang, they just happen to be black. It's not because they're black.

Now some stuff was cute and nicely done. The Moroccan cop tough loving Marwan, and the black cop protecting Mavela, simultaneously though shown separately. And how they each console Marwan and Mavela in the last scene; it shows a sort of cycle: that nonwhite cops are evermore tied into the youth gangs of people from their own cultures. The dilemma they face. They have a job to do but empathise with these kids. That was basically touched upon here. The film was 1 hr 30 minutes. If it had divulged the quadruple relationships between the two cops and the two young lovers the film would've been 10, 15 minutes longer; so the length shows there were some voids in the plot and character development. But for what it had it was okay as a whole, with some great moments and visuals in between.

I also like that Marwan and Mavela's relationship started rather simply, rather naturally. It wasn't like A Bronx Tale with Robert DeNiro where there's a drawn out chase for like half the film just to talk to the girl, and long family talks about black women and whether to date them or not. North African and Indian men approach black woman a lot all over the world and they'd do it more if it weren't for society.

Another cute scene was how the ending unfolded. Marwan is pressured from his end, while Mavela is shown being pressured from her end. I never even thought of Romeo and Juliet while watching; so I didn't know how the movie would end so it's not that obvious. How these scenes came to be was steadily and kind of excitingly approached, but with a heavy sense of hovering doom due to a preceding hodgepodge of nonstop horrible events like rapes and thefts and drugs and fights. I didn't know it would be like that, I think me crying at the end was simply me coming out of shock that the prior 85 minutes had put me through. It's damn near a horror film. Well I'll certainly be Googling "Brussels youth crime" later, won't I?

Another thing this film taught me based on its use of French and Dutch was the meaning of "migrant." Apparently you can gain citizenship in one European country and once you do, quite easily migrate to another and perhaps settle there. I did not know that, so perhaps anti-migration isn't just anti-Muslim and anti-European- lower class, but also anti-black...How rude.

Anyway nice looking film (it's like a loooong rap music video), HORRIBLE story about the WORST type of life, but nicely connected. Good acting, rap music so if you don't like it oh well, can't help you. Lots of rape, blatant sex scenes, bullets, tears, blood, drastically stupid decisions, montages of dangerous nightlife, perilous citylife...it's one big bloody queef of a movie. But it's not...boring. The lead actor, Aboubakr, is beautiful, charismatic and SEXY. He makes me want to go ALL the way to Brussels LOL! If it weren't for him I'll be honest..I would've abandoned during the opening credits. Would I watch again, hell no. Will I think about this film (and Aboubakr) for weeks to come. Oh yes.

good

[steve_fieremans · 8/10 · 6 August 2016]

A 15-year-old girl in a black gang in Brussels must choose between loyalty and love when she falls for a Moroccan boy from a rival gang. The city of Brussels, plagued by high rates of youth unemployment, is home to nearly forty street gangs, and the number of young people drawn into the city's gang culture increases each year. It's in this criminal milieu that directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah set Black, a pulse-pounding contemporary take on a Shakespearean tragedy. Worlds collide when Mavela (Martha Canga Antonio), a teenage girl with ties to Brussels' Black Bronx gang, meets Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi), a member of a rival Moroccan gang, at a police station. Keenly aware of the consequences of getting involved with someone from another gang, they at first resist their attraction to one another, but they can only resist for so long.

Good people being punished for trying becoming a better person

[harten-92837 · 9/10 · 2 February 2022]

Very sad story showing how good people living in a criminal environment cannot escape their bad lives. Friend and enemy are preventing them from escaping the criminal and cruel lives. They even get punished for trying. The movie shows how loyalty is forced upon people living in that environment.

What makes it so sad is that the situation in this movie is realistic and happening for real.

The acting from the two lead actors - Marwan and Mavela - is absolutely fantastic and very natural.

Not only is this movie racist, it is also just bad.

[lustershine-00992 · 3/10 · 14 October 2017]

First of all the plot is very simple. And that's a bad thing. It lies somewhere between Romeo and Juliet and the Brazilian Movie "Elite Squad" but with a soap opera tone that won't seduce anyone above 18 years old. I mean... it's VERY simple. Second comes the way it depicts Brussels and it so said gang life. And that's where the racist part comes in. (SPOILER ALERT, but mainly because the plot is sooo simple) The movie depicts a rivalry between two groups of people, one of which is a gang composed of young men and girls from the Congolese neighborhood and the other group is made out of a bunch of friends from a Moroccan neighborhood. The gang is involved in hard drugs dealing, prostitution, guns trafficking... I mean it's a "gang"; they have a mean leader who himself is the puppet of an older duke of the neighborhood. And on the other hand, the Moroccans smoke weed and sometimes steal a handbag but when they do so the movie depicts it as just a game they play in order to challenge one another. Somehow, the feeling you get is that the Black people involved in gangs are really bad people and Moroccans are not-so-bad-people because actually they're more a group-of-friends-rather-than-a-gang and if they get violent it's more because they are trapped in some moral issues. Now if you live in Brussels you would know that in real life it actually is the opposite that is happening: drug dealing and gun trafficking belongs mainly to the Moroccans of Brussels... the latter terrorists attacks on Paris and Brussels are here to prove it. If you go to the Congolese neighborhood of Brussels you will mainly encounter pot heads and nobody would ever sell you a gun. It mostly is a friendly neighborhood. So the question remains: why is the movie called BLACK? And why do they depict reality in such a twisted way. That's when you realize that one of the directors is from Morocco.

Such a lazy writing and such a wrong message ...

[wroblewski-radek · 3/10 · 14 September 2018]

This movie is well shot,I'll give it that. But the rest I hate more the more I think about it. The characters are shallow, everyone's either a sadistic douche or a selfish douche. The script is just another Romeo & Juliet ripoff. And not a very original one. And the message: according to this movie every young black person is a gangster. Not that they don't have aby other options, no. They want to be gangsters, they don't want to integrate into the society - cause they've been born black and they know it's the best life for them. Well, screw that message and screw this movie.

Talk about putting out the wrong message...

[Jerghal · 4/10 · 30 April 2016]

Adil El Arbi seems hell-bent on putting migrants into bad daylight, or one would hope...because if this was a factual portrayal of these people we would be right to want them gone as soon as possible. As far as the story goes Adil just took the Romeo & Juliet template and changed some characters names, ethnicities and locations and voila, the script almost wrote itself. Really, this drains the film of almost any surprises coz we all know how that story went. That's just being lazy Adil... As a plus, I do have to say the movie is well shot. The camera-work and cinematography is pretty good. The music as you might have guessed is horrible, atrocious rap music, that's what the gangsta boys listen to innit. But we all know that this is the lowest form of music after Flemish Butcher songs right? So turn the sound off or watch with earplugs. And now for the biggest problem of the whole movie: the characters. These are the biggest bunch of violent, stealing, raping a-holes you would never want to associate with, live in the neighborhood off or even encounter in your lifetime. Normally you as a watcher should be able to sympathize with or at least root for the protagonists but this film makes that very difficult. The black girl is about the only one you can feel for but the rest of these mothers could not die fast enough for me. Just as in 'IMAGE' these migrant characters have nothing but contempt for each other (Blacks vs Moroccans) but most of all for the working class Flemish people. We seems to be the bottom of the barrel for them. That nukes all hope that integrating these people in our society will ever have a chance, or that is what this film is shouting to us in capital letters. Adding insult to injury: this film is financed partially by the VAF, but the only Flemish words spoken in this flick are curse words like 'klootzak', 'makkak', 'hoer', etc...money well spent VAF... So if you want to get royally p*ssed off watch this movie, if you want a couple of hours of solid entertainment watch Deadpool.