La mentale

No actors, no script, no director, no movie. Naceri is a typically good boy. Perfect for Taxi, but not for this movie. Since, he is the worst actor in this movie. His _character_ is a mad, fanatic criminal offender, but he can't show us. The one good thing in the movie: the music score. Otherwise the worst movie that I had been ever see.

The director wants to make a beautiful gangster movie. From the cinematography to the music, it is beautiful. However, a beautiful movie and murderous gangs do not match quite well. If the director was making movies like 'Snow falling on Cedars' or 'Shine' then it would have been excellent. However, this film is just a mess.

Anyone could recognize this film as a tribute to HEAT and GOOD FELLAS in many scenes and characters, but that remains an excellent crime movie in the line of what the sixties or seventies gave us. Good character study and development. Gritty, poignant, especially the scene between Sami Naceri and his father, but I felt something ankward, clumsy, in the story telling though, I repeat, the intentions are honest and generous. Many clichés but we could not avoid them, not in this kind of film. Tragic, bloody, a real true French crime film, the rebirth of the early 2000s.

This is an excellent film. It's classic mob-drama. Something we've forgotten in this age of kung-fu fighting, wire-swinging, bullet-dodging one-liner screen-heroes. The acting is outstanding. Samy Naceri & Samuel Le Bihan are an impressive duo, in particular Samuel Le Bihan is very convincing as the violent gangster with a past he's trying to forget and a life he's trying to straighten out. Inevitably his past catches up with him...

Dris (Samuel Le Bihan) is an ex-con, living in the borderline between a decent and a criminal life. He has a regular and simple work and lives a simple life with his wife Lise (Marie Guillard) and loves his family. However, his childhood friends from his Arab community, including his best friend Yanis (Samy Naceri), are mobsters and his brother is a small time delinquent. Yanis tries to bring Dris back to his gang, and uses his former lover Nina (Clotilde Courau) to seduce him, taking him to expensive places to feel the importance of big money. Dris fights against the temptation, but an event will route him back to Yanis' gang and in a fight between gangs with tragic consequences for the whole community. "La Mentale" is another great French crime movie. The story is excellent, the performance of the whole cast is great and the music score is wonderful. The excellent French cinema is showing excellent thrillers, crime and horror movies. I do not understand the purpose or reason of some unfair reviews I glanced in IMDb. Probably these viewers intended to watch a Walt Disney cartoon, or maybe a French romance (they usually are excellent) and saw "La Mentale" by accident, because it is indeed an excellent mob movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Último Favor" ("The Last Favor")