A good movie

After hearing here and there some good things about this flick, I was really eager to check it out. Basically, if the Dardennes brothers would remake ‘The Godfather’, it would probably look like this. Indeed, it was a really intriguing crime feature involving the ‘hormone maffia’ in Belgium and it was really interesting to see those mobs figures involved with farmers, cattle and vets instead of the usual urban areas. So, the directing was really sober and efficient but, above all, the breakthrough performance by Matthias Schoenaerts was just really amazing. Indeed, once again, you have here an actor who completely disappear behind his character who physically looked damaged but even more so psychologically and through fate, he also became an enhanced and crazed beast like his own cattle. Unfortunately, like many movies I have seen recently, even though this set-up was really compelling, they added way to many characters and way too many sub-plots. Many of those were rather half-baked and unnecessary (for example, what was this all about Diederik being gay? I mean, you either develop this or you’d better completely drop it if you ask me). Still, in spite of its flaws, it remains a pretty good crime drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you want to see a good Belgian movie not directed by the Dardennes brothers for once.

7/10