Versus

An artificial and tasteless conflict between young offenders and petty bourgeois, clumsily imitating the atmospheres of Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) and Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983), but without the same talent undoubtedly. Everything is stereotyped and predictable, except the ending which is an excretion of madness and gratuitous violence.

Not to mention the deep and refined dialogues, vaguely inspired by a comedy from Molière, as the following scene elegantly suggests. Gabriel: 'Did you see me smashing theirs faces?' Achille: 'No, I was busy getting sucked'. Then, Gabriel begins to pee in the swimming pool. Finally, Achille pushes Gabriel in the pool.

Despite a relatively neat photography and an obvious sense of aesthetics, I guess this movie is a teen challenge to appear in the Bottom 100 of IMDb. Nice try!

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER I love this ankwar film, sometimes lousy in directing. I loved it, despite of this because you have here no good character vs evil one scheme,at least not as you may expect it to be. The petty bourgeois from the beginning, whom you can feel empathy for, becomes in the end some kind of evil one. And the rebel without a cause punk, by the scarface becomes nearly the good guy of the story. I loved the face to face between the two of them. OK, I repeat, that's pretty clumsy, not tht well acted, played, who I don't care at all. I love unusal schemes.

The movie sets out to make complicated things work. Youth and their ... struggles. Rich vs poor kids of sorts ... but not as simple as that. And yes if you compare this to Scorsese or Coppola - their early efforts mostly - this movie will not come up as a winner ... quite the opposite.

Still if you like your dramas to be different you may find some interesting ideas and certainly some interesting performances. Morally there are many things to explore, even when and while they may be confusing. Not great, but not the worst I've seen by a stretch.