Verraten und verkauft

What a shame that this movie is the last directed by Jean-Claude Missaien, a real lover and "connaisseur" of the American film noir from the 40's and 50's. A real lover. His three films: TIR GROUPE, RONDE DE NUIT and LA BASTON are real good crime movies, sharp, violent, fierce and human too. Many of us compared Missaien as a new Jean-Pierre Melville.

But he came at the wrong time. The early 80's, and later 90's, were the worst years for french crime movie industry. All that because of television series. All that crap like Navarro, Moulin, Julie Lescaut...made that all audiences avoided real crime movies in the theatres.

We had to wait until 1997 and J'IRAI AU PARADIS CAR L'ENFER EST ICI, LE COUSIN, and five more years with Olivier Marchall's genius, to see french crime movies again in dark rooms...

La Baston is a pretty good programmer about the face to face between a group of professional thieves and a gang of petty thugs who are used by the firsts as decoys in a daring police station robbery in order to steal a big drug shipment. When the young hoods rob a fancy property, and the police force of course warned towards them, the real gangsters of the film can attack the police station...

A revenge film, ruthless, poignant, painful, with characters deeply described. A real film noir "à la française". The last of these for almost a decade.

Don't miss it. For God's sake.