Film Reviews

Army of Crime

• Rating:
• Director: Robert Guediguian
• Starring: Simon Abkarian
• Details: France / 139 mins (tbc).

In 2006, Days of Glory (Indigenes) documented a little-known story about North African Muslims dodging racism and German bullets as they fight for France in WWII, and Army of Crime follows similar lines. This time out, Armenians, anti-Fascist Italians, veterans of the Spanish Civil War and non-French communists, and Jews give their lives for the Resistance in occupied Paris. Where as Days of Glory really got under the skin of its characters, which led to a heart-breaking and explosive finale, Army of Crime comes across rather cold and fizzles out by the close.
Paris, June, 1941, and the French Resistance is starting to gather strength. It's still disorganised with only pockets of violence carried out by individuals but, under the leadership of the Armenian poet Missak (Abkarian), a chain of command is established. The peaceful Missak struggles with the killing but his underlings - especially Marcel (Stevenin) and Thomas (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) - can't wait to get stuck into the hated Boche. Their foolhardiness, however, attracts attention from the French police, working in tandem with the Gestapo and the occupying German force and the net begins to close around the freedom fighters.
Director Guediguian steeps his film in realism - there are no flashy action scenes and the violence is dealt with a matter-of-fact approach similar to Uli Edel's Baader Meinhof Complex. The plotting might be on the slow side but it's meticulous in its build up to the sporadic outbursts of violence - it's almost an hour in before Missak is approached by Resistance leaders to organise a unit – and brings to mind Spielberg's Munich or Singer's Valkyrie with its attention to detail. Despite the long lulls between the action sequences, Army of Crime never fails to be interesting. Guediguian drops the ball in one major aspect, though. His film opens with the roll call of the dead; all the characters we're going to get to know over the almost two-and-a-half hours running time are going to wind up dead. The director hopes this gives his film a sense of impending doom, and on one hand it does, but on the other hand, the most important hand, it gives away the ending. Shame, that.

Review by Gavin Burke