‘November’: Film Review | skin 2022

A thriller so immersed in its relentless, breathless race against the clock, it never stops to discuss what it’s trying to say. November (November) Follows a group of French counter-terrorist agents as they try to capture the remaining criminals behind a devastating wave of attacks that hit Paris in 2015.

Directed by new French resident action expert Cedric Jimenez (Force, Კ Connection) And starring the likes of Jean Dujardin, Anais Demostier, Sandrine Cyberlen and Jeremy Rainier, the film expends tons of energy and some resources ($13 million budget, which appears to be less than the high production values) reflects what took place in five days between Nov.^me – When jihadists attacked several targets in Paris, including the Bataclan Concert Hall – and 18^meWhen authorities located two of them in the northern suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis.

These two events completed the film and probably his wisest decision as a director. NovemberJimenez never appears first. Instead, after the opening chase scene, where lead agent Freddie (Dujarden) loses track of the suspect in Greece a few months ago, we’re heading to the counter-terrorist team’s Paris headquarters when the Bataklan attack began. A lone agent on a night shift gets a call to the office. Suddenly, dozens of other phones start ringing and it’s clear that something important is missing.

The phrase art implied in this opening sequence isn’t entirely left over in the film, which follows Fred and fellow agent Ines (Demustier), as well as Helusa (Cyberlen) and Marco (Rainier), chained to the office, before fighting. Crazy I found two snipers who managed to escape. We see every door slammed by cops, every phone ringing, every suspect they ask and every false warning that follows, PD Nicolas Loir’s camera always on Steadicam as he tries to keep the actors moving forward. He to catch the bad guys.

Jiménez and writer Olivier Demangel (who also wrote the film Omar List father and soldier, premiered in Un Certain Regard) seems to be obsessed with the truth, photographing the actual places where events took place and following the actual investigation closely. There’s a side to documentary drama November It’s well done by both the cast and the band, but other than that, what is the movie about? Well, not so much.

The model here appears to be Catherine Bigelow. zero dark thirty, which relived ten years of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in exciting ways. But he also asked bigger questions about America’s place in the post-9/11 world, the moral consequences of torture, and the existential importance of fulfilling its mission, without further ado. Such problems are mostly non-existent. NovemberExcept, perhaps, for a few scenes involving Samia (the fantastic Lina Khudri), a Muslim girl who decides to live with her own roommate (Sarah Apchen), suspected of terrorist links.

Fred and Ines end up being the main leader and the latter is forced to trick Samia into getting what she needs. This moment gives a small part of the human drama, if not in a film more saturated with adrenaline than with the power of the mind. There is also some misunderstanding about who is who and what is, Jiménez never gives titles or explanations. We don’t even know the name of the service led by Freddie – apparently it’s SDAT (Sous-direction Antiterrorist) – or what sort of chain of command it operates under. All we know is that many people are running around, moving around or leaving their desks overnight. Is anyone sleeping or eating?

This approach has its limits, though it can also pay off from time to time, especially the gruesome ones, after the police finally involve the jihadists in their little Saint-Denis hideout and all hell breaks loose. . . According to reports at the time, around 5,000 bullets were fired by French authorities during the night raid, and you can be sure Jiménez includes every single one of them in his film.

Likewise, the director shifted the muscles of his action to his Marseille Force, which was a local hit in 2020 that brought audiences back to theaters and featured some spectacular scenes, but it also seemed to go beyond French police at the expense of others. (Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter that people should see the film, which revealed the “terrible reality” of Marcel.)

November Adapt to the individual law enforcement point of view, but the real problem is that we can never understand who these people are behind the uniform. Limited to a continuous five-day chase, the film ends up limiting its scope. At best, we can go for a walk together, speed up, and never worry about watching our backs.