Le gang des Antillais

This film should have been made forty years ago, although later is better than never, especially when it is about talking of rage against social injustice. Forty years ago, remember, it was the full period of the American Blaxploitation: movies made by Afro Americans, starring mainly Black actors and destined to Black audiences. There was no equivalent in France then. But France is not America. Now, forty years later, times have changed and this kind of stuff can now emerge. This one is a very tiny budget one, and that explains the low quality. It is an interesting feature, for the reasons above, but unfortunately, corny, lousy, clumsy at the most. For instance, the story is about a gang of French Creoles who rob post offices. The story is inspired by actual events and this gang was supposed to have pulled a dozen of capers. In this film, we only see ONE heist...Acting and directing are awful, I warn you, but I am happy that this film has been correctly released; I was afraid the release would have been very narrow, as so many other French features of this kind. So many movies that are shown in only ONE theatre and that's all. I guess the distributors bet on the fact that, in France, the Creole community is very important, and this film is above all a film about the Creole community. Community from the French West Indies - Antilles - which are very close to the Caribbean Islands. In the theatre, I was nearly the only white folk. The unique scene that moved me in this film is the one where the main lead is in prison, receiving the visit of his fiancée, and when he asks her to show him her tits and p...y, so that she becomes disgusted by him and then forget him for good, instead losing ten years of her life waiting for him. He sacrifices his love for her to save her. Very moving.

It portrays and masterfully dramatizes the unknown French bill BUMIDOM, which promoted a "genocide by substitution", generating severe episodes of racism, prejudice and rationalization, which was basically based on stimulating the emigration to France of citizens of the Antilles, with one-way ticket, and the return ticket, being almost impossible to acquire due to the high cost, a peaceful and "humanized" enslavement, cruel and repulsive... An excellent film, packed with a great drama... Adapted from Loic Lery's autobiographical novel, uniting and reviving a group of men who resorted to armed robbery of post offices, through brutal and violent means, aiming to fight poverty and fight against a nation that betrayed them.