Bronx

A very French cops and gangsters film set in Marseille. Nearly everyone's having an affair, smokes, drinks too much, turns a blind eye, breaks the rules, is corrupt or a corruptor. Well framed with some excellent shoot outs, some clever twists to keep you guessing, and a finale that I certainly didn't see coming. I almost hit the stop button as a twee French acoustic love song came on, a que for the end credits. It wasn't, don't stop, keep watching. Recommended but not an award winner, a solid 7.

The good: beautiful cinematography, dark, gritty atmosphere contrasted with the sunny seaside environment. Gory, hardcore action scenes.

The bad: almost all characters are übermacho middle-aged men in dark clothing and no personality whatsoever. For me it made it impossible to follow the plot. At no point of the movie had I any idea who is who, who is shooting at whom and why, and generally what is happening. On the plus side at least I can't give you a spoiler.

The balance: if you are exceptionally good at keeping 30 French men's names in mind and linking them to nearly identical characters then maybe you will have a better time than I did. Otherwise don't bother.

A fun crazed French action cop gang movie where everyone is dirty and looks like they're in a really cool French sunglasses ad featuring tough cops and gangsters. The script and plot are about as to be expected from a sunglasses ad. 😅

Solid movie this, made with passion. One fails to empathize with the characters though as this area of the movie is somewhat under developed. With a little more finesse, this movie could have been another Pulp Fiction or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Overall though, a great enjoyable movie in the French tradition.

Ya see what I did there? 😜 The cinematography and special effects for the gore scenes were excellent. The directing was decent as was the cast performances, but I felt some actors were missing that oomf factor, and felt like they were there only for the paycheck. The action wasn't really anything to get excited about and felt bland. It certainly needed much more of it. The pacing was quite slow so the 116 min runtime felt like almost 3 hours. There were many plot and technical issues, and the story somewhat convoluted and seemed to be put together in a rush. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining film, but I feel it missed the mark to be a great one. So it's a 7 /10 from me