I discovered this little gem in July 2000. I fell literally in love with it. I did not know Samuel Le Bihan. The story is not very surprising but it keeps your attention all along the picture. It's well built, very entertaining, sharp, square. The film seems very quick, short, and you don't feel any boredom. You can watch it in different ways. You can say it's a common action movie, nothing else. But for me, who has seen thousand of movies in my life, especially thrillers and other action movies, and I who knows all clichés, stereotypes, schemes used a billion times, this features contains something very unusual. There is no here any love story, totally useless, between the hero and the gal who "hangs around the corner". The films works with the contrast between savage, wild youngsters, delinquents from the big city, and the natives in the country side where the action takes place. The film makers could not avoid this.
We had already seen that in an old french movie: LES LOUPS DANS LA BERGERIE, shot in the early sixties, where young hoodlums were sent in the country by the authorities to re-educate them. Young savages who were confronted with big gangsters. As in this movie: TOTAL WESTERN. Or also LA HORSE, or LA TERRE ET LE SANG, where a bunch of city hoodlums are fighting against locals in the deep countryside for a bullion or a shipment of drug, as you also had in CANICULE. And of course the final scenes which are a tribute to the western in general. Awesome finale.
It's a pretty violent and brutal piece of work. I must admit. Not for the squeamish.
But the thing that was amazed me the most was the character played by Samuel Le Bihan. He is not the super hero, invincible, as we could expect. He is neither the villain who realizes that he could do better for the man kind and finds the redemption.
No.
He is simply an honest man, fair at the most, there is something of nobility in him, like a knight. A chivalrous knight who knows that his fate will lead him to tragedy. A knight who wants to preserve his dignity. Till his own end. I can tell you that I did not see that everywhere. It's very rare. Very. So beautiful.
The ending is worth. Really.
A great little movie.
We had already seen that in an old french movie: LES LOUPS DANS LA BERGERIE, shot in the early sixties, where young hoodlums were sent in the country by the authorities to re-educate them. Young savages who were confronted with big gangsters. As in this movie: TOTAL WESTERN. Or also LA HORSE, or LA TERRE ET LE SANG, where a bunch of city hoodlums are fighting against locals in the deep countryside for a bullion or a shipment of drug, as you also had in CANICULE. And of course the final scenes which are a tribute to the western in general. Awesome finale.
It's a pretty violent and brutal piece of work. I must admit. Not for the squeamish.
But the thing that was amazed me the most was the character played by Samuel Le Bihan. He is not the super hero, invincible, as we could expect. He is neither the villain who realizes that he could do better for the man kind and finds the redemption.
No.
He is simply an honest man, fair at the most, there is something of nobility in him, like a knight. A chivalrous knight who knows that his fate will lead him to tragedy. A knight who wants to preserve his dignity. Till his own end. I can tell you that I did not see that everywhere. It's very rare. Very. So beautiful.
The ending is worth. Really.
A great little movie.