I want to first say, I don't mind slow movies, and I don't mind long movies (this one was slow, but short, but felt long). I've watched long movies, and slow movies, and enjoyed them. But this movie drug on and on.
The movie description is a bit deceptive. No one in this is living on "the streets". The supposed "projects", look far better than a lot of places I lived in. This movie was slow. There was no plot. I wanted to like it. The acting was decent, but it was just like they filmed a bunch of random things happening, little incidents, with no real "story".
I think what they were trying to do was simply show us a side of France we may not be familiar with... one where the police street check blacks, and gangsters (white and black alike) kill each other, and people rob each other etc.
It wasn't really effective. The speech scenes got old. But the final speech in the "debate" was kind of interesting.
Over all there was no real "story" to this. It just felt like a series of incidents filmed, leading up to nothing. I like movies that make me thing, movies that explore issues of race, or morality. But this one just fell short. I found myself bored too much to give this even a 5 star rating.
I feel bad giving it a low rating, because I feel like in some way that takes away from the messages the movie tries to express... but sadly, it didn't have enough of a story to really rate it high.
Some of the camera angles were weird too, which took me out of the moment. Such as one scene where they were sitting outside at a little cafe table, and to the front left and right were giant faces of two people... but ahead of them were our characters. That really took me out of the moment, as did many scenes.
Yet... some scenes were filmed well too.
The movie description is a bit deceptive. No one in this is living on "the streets". The supposed "projects", look far better than a lot of places I lived in. This movie was slow. There was no plot. I wanted to like it. The acting was decent, but it was just like they filmed a bunch of random things happening, little incidents, with no real "story".
I think what they were trying to do was simply show us a side of France we may not be familiar with... one where the police street check blacks, and gangsters (white and black alike) kill each other, and people rob each other etc.
It wasn't really effective. The speech scenes got old. But the final speech in the "debate" was kind of interesting.
Over all there was no real "story" to this. It just felt like a series of incidents filmed, leading up to nothing. I like movies that make me thing, movies that explore issues of race, or morality. But this one just fell short. I found myself bored too much to give this even a 5 star rating.
I feel bad giving it a low rating, because I feel like in some way that takes away from the messages the movie tries to express... but sadly, it didn't have enough of a story to really rate it high.
Some of the camera angles were weird too, which took me out of the moment. Such as one scene where they were sitting outside at a little cafe table, and to the front left and right were giant faces of two people... but ahead of them were our characters. That really took me out of the moment, as did many scenes.
Yet... some scenes were filmed well too.