Truands

A French gangster film set in Paris with a very thin plot, lots of blood & gore, little or no character studies or plot lines, violent misogynist sex. I kept watching this and waiting for a plot to emerge. It didn't happen. The film starts with episodes of the various factions or gangs involved. One gang member is imprisoned. From then the film simply becomes a series of killings and murders until few of them are left. Reservoir Dogs it is not. Meserine it is not. Ronin it is not. The screenplay appears merely to be a pastiche of the best and worst of American gangster genre. The characters here are portrayed as cold violent individuals. Some characters have no apparent place within a thin plot - just filling up road kill. All this violent mayhem in a capital city and not a single policeman in sight? I found this film to be without much merit and not one that I would watch again, or indeed recommend.

I just don't understand... Where is the story, where are the characters ? Well, this is a strange movie. I'm still wondering whether is was good or not... This could have been a classic but the characters are so flat: They all live for the same things (i.e. drugs, alcohol, money and Hungarian whores) they get doing some "business". None of the characters seems to have something unique or original. The story is really completing this. Whith no-personality-characters you get a no-personality-story or just a no-thing. On the other hand if you really haven't got anything to do today. Just go. There is a lot of dumb mafia guys shootin' and drinking all film long. Really interesting ;-) Fortunately I didn't pay for the cinema so I can't regret it !

I enjoyed watching this film. Powerful acting from the cast and specially from "Philippe Caubère". I hope he does more films in the future in the "crime" category. I would cast him as the villain, bad guy anytime : )

I don't understand the negative reviews not finding a storyline here :) A good film needs to have your attention for its duration, and believe me this film does that.

I'm from LA, the movie capital of the world. Nowadays films are made by the kilo here :) but there is no quality. Give me a dozen "Truands" per year and I'd be a happy audience!!

Paris Lockdown: this one-man army of a wet paper bag of poor excuses of a wannabe gangster film, this is as empty as a crêpe Suzette in a nunnery on a Sunday morning. As rich as poor taste goes, yes there's boobs, bottoms and nodding heads galore but takeaway the sleaze, the flying bullets and the flash cars then all we have done is landed on the square that tells us to "Go Back To GO, do not collect £200...start again".

This is as deep and meaningful as gutters will allow it to rise, while an insight of Parisian lowlife drug smugglers, pimps and killers, there is just nothing to add to the narrative. Nothing. The characters are living the life of a one-dimensional caricature. We are given a so-called gang leader who simply is not memorable, and his pet dogs are just as easily put-down and unmissable as the whole sorry affair.

The entire episode here seems too have been pulled out of any sequence in their life, it is a Soap Opera of blood and thugs. This is a basic rise and fall of a Paris crime boss who lives his life whoring, shooting and, again, shooting. The development of these people is as far as your next bus stop to Plainville, even the Robert De Niro look-alike and his greased-up hair looks too pastiche, too…already done.

Frédéric Schoendoerffer, director, has placed the action in the seedy side of town, the bars, strip joints and night filled streets of Paris, France, Europe and to be fair, any self respecting Parisian gangster seeing this sad debunkle would be, allegedly, embarrassed.

With just a touch of bewilderment, this crime-caper has no direction apart from up. It is not a poorly made film, it's, forgive the pun, executed well, nice offensive language, great looking girls and mean mothers' doing their job, only too well. Some nice, forgive the pun, once more, location shots and bad attitudes, the odd torture sequence, done very nicely too, ouch. However, it is the putting together of this work that to make any coherent sense a plot, let alone a sub-plot would have been acceptable.

These guys are hard-core but when the spotlight of the good-cop, bad-cop is shining on their sorry backside, it is the whole main feature that will give the game away and get you busted, sent-down and sent to solitary

'Truands' as it is named in French, somehow passed unnoticed and has been disregarded by audience. Simply said, people just do not know about it. But from many angles, this movie is a great piece of cinema, in the likes of other 'new, dark & violent' french movies. If there was a proper story telling component, it would be easily comparable to the Melville's cinema: deep dive in the criminal underworld and its ramifications; nightlife and violence, switching alliance and evolving relations of criminals competing for power.

And this is what it is about: the struggle of a boss to maintain its position on top, while fighting back challengers and suffering from a decadent organization. The figurehead of this clan - Claude - is greatly portrayed - as a dangerous megalomaniac. Its protégée, soon to be its own 'brutus' is brilliantly played by Magimel. Violence is omnipresent and could be a bit overwhelming sometime. The movie could have won by showing less and suggesting more: it leaves a 'print' that divert from the story. Story that searched itself for some time before one of the thread is followed up till the end. The lack of rhythm is disorientating and montage - after a great first 20 min - lacks imagination.

I still like and have seen this movie multiple times. The atmosphere of crime and the presentation of the protagonists are excellent, the exploration of nightly and forbidden Paris is also attractive. A clearer script, a bit of aesthetic work could have made a much classer movie about the fall of a Crime boss. I still give a 8 out of 10 for the entertainment and the courageous project (it s a bit rare if French Feature films nowadays) On a similar topic of crime boss fall, I recommend ''Le Second Soufflé''.