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Paris Lockdown
Directed by: Frederic Schoendoerffer Starring Benoit Magimel - Franck Phillipe Caubere – Claude Corti Beatrice Dalle – Beatrice Olivier Marchal – Jean Guy
Synopsis. Ageing Top Dog of the Paris criminal gangs Claude is beginning to lose his Empire. Deals descend into tumultuous violence. The young Arab gangsters he occasionally deals with are losing respect for him. The cops are breathing down his neck. This film follows his increasingly frustrated attempts to shore up the collapsing structure of his criminal enterprise whilst simultaneously attempting to prove his manhood and authority, both to his enemies who smell blood in the water and are circling for the kill, and his inner circle who need leadership more than ever. Much of the action is seen through the eyes of Franck, a coldly neutral independent killer who, together with his friend Jean- Guy, occasionally works for Claude...
Review: First off, as ought really to be expected from a Parisian Gangster film this just oozes style. It is slickly shot, the wardrobe and sets are wall to wall gallic savoire-faire. The locations combine the most chic Paris locations and panoramas with the bland ordinariness of hypermarket car parks. The Ultra cool Penthouses and hotel suites of the criminaly rich with the grim seediness of underworld clubs and bars. Also, every single person in the cast smokes almost continuously throughout the movie. This is a very violent film. The kind of people it is portraying are violent as an occupation. Acts of violence have to be perpetrated energetically and visibly to discourage people taking advantage, to the point that occasionally during scenes of appalling torture, bystanders appear bored as they have seen it so many times before.
Often films like this desensitise the viewer and the deaths begin to mean less and less as the body count rises. Surprisingly this is not the case with this film. Especially as so few of the main characters draw any sympathy from the viewer what so ever. I did not expect that after a particularly brutal double cross in which two gangs pull out assault rifles (and even heavier artillery!) in broad daylight, I would be shocked, but I was time and again. The action ranges between graphic stomach twisting torture, beatings and rape, to out and out shoot ups. It is never far from the surface, and as the story develops we realise that as trust disintegrates in the face of greed and paranoia it could erupt at any moment between any of the characters. There is also a sequence illustrating the plight of the eastern European girls smuggled in to France to work in the brothels where the gangsters like to spend much of their time. The casual brutality they suffer painfully de- glamourises the gangsters’ existence and once again distances us from them.
A pleasant surprise in this film is Beatrice Dalle as Claude’s wife. Wonderfully underplaying the strung out party girl plummeting into middle age and trying to get pregnant (Claude is desperate for a son) Her character while only to aware of the horrors her husband is inflicting on Paris, cares for little beyond nice clothes, Cocaine, the occasional girl and the next foreign holiday. Franck provides a highly suitable view point for the dealings and double crosses of the story. He is utterly calm and fearless. He does not shout and threaten and posture, because he does not need to. And when he goes toe to toe with someone (in the course of a perfectly executed burglary) he displays a neat practical military fighting style completely at odds with the frantic brawling of the rest of the cast. This film is very watchable. I feel that it told the story of Claude’s decline well. How accurate a depiction of the Paris underworld and how they deal, I don’t know. The action sequences are always gripping, sometimes queasy. The effects (especially in the car park) are tight. The standard of acting and the story itself are both very very high. Having said all that, there are many films using the same or very similar subject matter. You won’t be seeing a truly groundbreaking story, and as a result it can feel like you are watching something made for TV. but you will see a film of the gangster genre which is firing on all cylinders and there is one moment of pure surprise. Drama, Violence, Betrayal, Tension, Action. 6 out of 10. (Sulaco)
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