I love french films, especially crime thrillers, and films of this type. Dobermann by far and away is the best film of this type that i have ever seen. I bought Paris Lockdown hoping for more of what i'd seen and loved in Dobermann. I was left feeling let down by Paris Lockdown. I just didn't 'get it' at all - i don't actually know what they were trying to achieve with this film. Any chance of really showing and fleshing out the characters and story seems to have fallen by the wayside - which is a shame because it could have easily been a classic. The only decent character and acting was done by Benoit and Tomer. I don't know really... i'm pretty open minded but i'd have a hard time recommending this. This will probably sit on the shelf, or in the loft, for a long time now.
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baston-225 June 2008
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"Truands" is a movie I love because it destroys all the clichés gangster movies usually give us. Rise and fall of thugs, features where violence keeps close to romance,and where main characters are nevertheless sympathetic for the audience. And when they die, the same audience suffer in the inside. See "Scarface", for example...
With "Truands", except some scenes where there are dialogs taken from "Scarface" - such as "You think you can f...me?!!!" "Nobody f...me!!!"..., everything is different from other pictures. There is no trace of sympathetic character. And of course no humor at all. Nothing to do with Tarantino. Every one is Absolutely nasty at possible. Every one. It's disgusting. If you wait for some moral or ethic, you'll puke all over the joint...No emotion either. Debauchery, treason and slaughter. Baths of blood all over the movie. Bullets, buck shots 00, riot guns, M 16.... All the details for "Truands". In summary the real underworld. No cops character, only hoodlums.
The character played by Benoit Magimel is absolutely out of his usual ones. Angel face Magimel is here a ruthless murderer, a professional killer. He and his buddy Olivier Marchall played a duo of killers which reminds me some American classic...
----------BEWARE SPOILERS-------------------------
And there is no end. Life goes on for the nasty ones.
But I love that. It changes. -
Cinema_Fan29 January 2009Paris 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 -
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 !
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rstout35266 March 2013A 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.
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we_like_it_much26 October 2012'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''. -
willdm200010 September 2008If you rent this movie, bring a long a peg for your nose, as this is an utter stinker. The main drive of a good gangster film, is the characterisation, the motives behind the violence. This has none of that, all it has is a grumpy Alan Sugar a-like moping round shouting and swearing. You don't care about him or any of the other characters at all, people drift in and out of the story without any sort of motivation. Its flat and dull, even the half decent car-park shoot out is spoiled with fake cgi blood. I will say one thing though, the torture scene with the drill to the knee, is pretty cool, but doesn't go any further than in the trailer. In fact, just watch the trailer, its much better than the movie itself. Proper wafty. If you want to see an intelligent French gangster film, with pathos and a sense of realism get 'The beat that my heart skipped'.
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the_wolf_imdb3 August 2012This movie is hardcore, brutal, explicit, has a lot of whores, whores are being raped, smuggled, killed, there is also a lot of drugs and even some uranium. There are different characters, Islamic Arabs who are gangsters and love whores, drugs and Koran... just about everything. All the characters are nuts.
The worst flaw of the movie is there is no observable story or plot. Things somewhat do happen in a sequential manner, one killing follows another killing, but there is no background for characters, there are no motives, just the killings. There is probably some background story of the characters, but it is completely hidden. Even the ending does not make any sense. Basically there is no beginning or ending of the movie. It just happens to start and when the number of characters reaches low numbers (because they are being murdered) it somehow stops.
What was that? Is this supposed to be some new form of crime porn or something? What has happened to the French cinema? Adding one brutality over another one does not create a movie. I have seen some computer game shooters that had better story which is actually very very bad. -
tikke23 March 2009I 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!! -
muspelhem12 November 2007IMHO this is one of the best and most hardcore gangster flicks out there.
It's grisly, sure, but also produced in a very realistic way, and the characters are extreme, most of them are utter nuts.
It has french humor, sex, drugs and violence in abundance.
But it also has an impressive array of characters and quite a complex story line.
In short, prepare for a hell of a ride.
I rank this one a masterpiece.
Check it out! -
movies-by-db3 March 2015To start of with, this film no fun ride, nothing glossy or Hollywood like happy endings bull.. It's hard as nails, nihilistic and pretty gutwrenching. It also comes over as very realistic.
The director also had a big hand in the (later) great French cop-series "Braquo" which is also excellent and very tough, and this has the same style.
Sure, it may lack story, I would say it's almost like watching a documentary: a day in the life of... But the happenings that unfold are told with so much vigour and relentlessness (is that a word?) that they kept me glued to the screen the whole 107 min.
Always on the lookout for anything this raw and another reviewer compared it with another French jewel "Dobermann" which as you will understand I absolutely adore as well. But the two are not at all comparable. They are in fact worlds apart with "Dobermann" being a comic-book like eurotrash/punk action adventure and this a slick slice of painful underworld realism.
Absolutely stunning 9/10 -
cskjott1 June 2015If you enjoy gangster movies, this is a must see, it's top notch! It's the hard and gut wrenching rendering of the hollow, treacherous life and risks you take being a proper gangster, and I've had the dubious privilege of meeting some in my time. The best gangster is the one with the biggest balls, there is no aber dabei. The message of the movie is clear as a bell; menace is the order of the day, by surprise or default. There is no glory, there is no deeper meaning, simple pleasures have no meaning and it's dog eat dog. Ugly life at best and it's really portrayed expertly by the players, shallow and unreliable, but reliably unpredictable, terrifying and perfectly psychotic bar a couple who are a bit 'smarter' than the rest and hold actual dreams for better things. The gallery is typical and every type is in place and proper form. The subtleties are really minute but they are absolutely included, look away and you'll miss it as a whole! I will watch this many more times. You might have a tough time digging it out, but well worth the effort. Now if you'll excuse me I'll go watch some other favourites!
And to those reviewers who were mystified or felt let down by the plot or the characters, may I suggest they watch the more mainstream movies and actors, because the fabulous subtleties of 'Truands' were apparently lost on them. They've never met real gangsters! Even the loot is realistic, just enough 'pennies' to make a new life! -
deanza711 August 2013I'm really tough on realism, good scripting, dialogs and screenplay when it gets to appreciate a movie. In this case, Schoendorffer made one of the most realistic and even scaring movie of the french criminal society. Nothing is left aside to stigmatize what happens on the dark side of the french society. Ruthless mobsters fighting silently for their share of drug business, prostitutes, theft and a lifestyle that consists in consuming life by both ends. I must actually admit that this movie is in total opposition with anything I've seen in recent years, in particular American crime thrillers that are often quite stereotyped. This one is so realistic, so close to real life that it is scaring. The trafficking that goes on here is the one you read about in the newspapers and the actors play so convincingly that you feel like a silent witness of a mobsters' daily life. It's not a movie for kids clearly and Schoendorffer spares the viewer nothing of the terrible violence of this underground world. This movie is among the top 10 I've seen in my life and I guess it will stay there. I can only recommend it warmly to anyone interested in seeing a real good crime thriller. Of course, if you're french and live in the southern Paris suburbs, you'll recognize lots of places in this movie and will even feel more involved with the screenplay.
Definitely a must. -
coffeemug13 July 2009Bad acting (philippe Caubere acts like Michel Constantin on a bad day...), cheap violence and torture (did they really need to glorify the act of drilling a hole through a kneecap, are we supposed to enjoy this?), no plot - just mean bad guys (if this was part of providing young audiences with role models I believe the director should be sued, these models are not going to give any good ideas to youngsters... ).
There are much better contemporary French films around, this was just a pathetic "kill bill" try à la française, and even so, it misses the point.
If you want good french stuff with suspense, violence, tough guys and a fine plot, look for "MR 73" or "36 quai des orfèvres"