Black

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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.