A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick (the title did sound terribly generic) but since it was directed by Anne Fontaine and was starring Virginie Efira, I thought I might as well check it out. The first 30 mins turned out to be something similar to ‘Rashomon’ during which we saw a seemingly typical working day from the perspective of 3 street police agents. Sure, it was nothing really original but it was efficient enough. Above all, I was again impressed by Virginie Efira who is so charismatic but still completely convincing in everything she does and this movie was no exception. Concerning Omar Sy, I have nothing against him but, as far as I’m concerned, he pretty much plays the same character in all his movies. Anyway, when the trio of police agents was introduced in some rather grim way, the movie then started to focus on a transport of some political refugee being extradited to his home country and I thought it was quite interesting to behold. Indeed, I was born in France, lived there for 20 years and then lived for another 20 years in the Netherlands and in both countries, immigrants and refugees have always been a hot topic (in fact, it was the main topic of the last general election in the Netherlands). As displayed in this movie, what should we do with these people? On one hand, nobody (in France or in the Netherlands or anywhere else in Europe) wants to shelter them but they will keep coming anyway and, when they come, they are welcomed in such dreadful centers where the living conditions might be even worse than in a jail. So, what’s the alternative? Dropping them in a middle of a huge city like Paris or in the middle of nowhere like Virginie tried in this movie? It didn’t seem to be a much better solution for a poor guy who didn’t speak French or even English and it was fortunately well handled in this movie. To be honest, this mix of the two parts (the everyday life of these cops and the extradition) didn’t really work together and, eventually, it seemed that Virginie and Aristide will then just move on with their lives without thinking much again about this poor refugee or the 1000’s of other refugees facing a similar fate in France or anywhere else. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.