Gangsta

The movie has a pretty good storyline. The special effects were on point.

Bad writing, cliché dialogues and incredibly flat characters lead to wretched performances by otherwise good actors like Matteo Simoni.

Belgian directors Adil el Arbi and Bilall Fallah made 2 good relatively good movies before this one: Image and Black. Yet Gangsta/Patser is a absolute mess. The story is all over the place, the characters are depicted as lowlifes who are unable to do anything meaningful but bark at each other and repeat lines from cult movies as Scarface over and over and over. It has been a long time since I watched a movie with characters as flat as the ones in this film.

El Arbi and Fallah really missed a chance of making a great movie here that would put themselves and lead actor Matteo Simoni in the spotlight. In some sort they actually did this, but not in a positive way.

As an inhabitant of Antwerp I can say this movie really captured the coke culture in the city. There are some nice insider jokes in the movie referring to real situations (the cops ripping off illegal immigrants, the stolen Colombian coke that set of a drug war) and characters (the black Amsterdam dealer,), so the script ain't no fantasy. All this mixed with an eighties pop/neon/Miami Vice-shooting makes this one of the best action movies I've seen in a long time.

A fast-paced drug-fuelled urban story. Unlike any other film in Belgian cinema history this flick keeps the finger on the pulse aiming at a young audience. The rumor mill spun out of control as the directors were linked to big budget action movies but with this one they obviously want to follow in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese, and did a great job. Speedy cuts, voice-over story telling and raw humour will have uncle Marty in stitches, the Wolf of Wall Street is never far off. Foreign viewers will miss out on the true crime references but be aware; 75% of the events portrayed actually happened in Belgium & Holland in the 2010s. Some minor stuttering in the tempo and unnecessary twists & turns in the plot keep this from getting a straight A.

When this movie came out I added it in my to-watch list but then for some reason I completely forgot about it. It's only after watching the sequel Patsers (or Gangstas for the English title) that I realized I just watched the sequel before the original. It doesn't really matter though as you can easily watch both movies in any order although it is better to start with the original. I liked both of them equally. I really like the style of directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Their way of making movies is special and if they get the right budget they will make other gems in the future. Patser is mostly fiction, but you can't deny they got their inspiration in the messed up drug scene of Antwerpen and the Netherlands that at one point got seriously out of hand. To this day, and I'm writing this in 2025, it's still very much the same, still going wrong. The acting is very good and that from the entire cast. I watched the two movies in a couple of days and I can only say that they are quality entertainment.