A great French gangster film
Here’s a movie that didn’t get much press or success when it came out in theaters. And yet… Directed by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, The Temple Woods Ganga thriller that uses all the codes of a heist film in the most realistic setting possible, it is a gem of cinema that we see all too rarely.
Pons is a retired soldier who lives in the popular neighborhood of Bois du Temple. While he is burying his mother, his neighbor Bébé, who belongs to a group of city gangsters, prepares to rob the convoy of a rich Arab prince…
Gangster film, story of a successful robbery but with terrible reprisals that will transform it revenge film, The Temple Woods Gang it contains everything it does a pure genre film. His taciturn and intimately wounded vigilante, his affectionate gangsters trapped in the face of an enemy much more powerful than them, his shootings, his murders, his Outstanding nightclub sequence which echoes its striking opening musical sequence during a funeral mass…
In this film the best known name and face are those of Slimane Dazi, who plays a private investigator hired by the Arab prince to find those responsible for the robbery. The latter is a secondary character, and the main cast is made up of actors little known to the general public, actors from French theater and cinema. We thus find Pons embodied by a Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche faithful, Régis Laroche, and in the role of “Bébé” Philippe Petit.
The Temple Woods Gangchallenging and surprising
If Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche sticks to the codes of the “criminal” thriller to structure and animate The Temple Woods Gang, and interprets these codes literally, rejects their spectacular and glorifying aspect. He films this robbery and its consequences in their most banal reality, in the monotonous and impartial daily life of “normal” thieves. They form a family and, unlike films of the same genre which ignore the social condition of their heroes and anti-heroes, from them we discover their reality, their deep roots and their identity in a popular suburb of France in the 1920s.
One could then believe that this naturalistic intention will break the suspense consubstantial with gangster cinema, photography and the cruel lights of The Temple Woods Gang, its absence of extradiegetic music to make room for the dull roar of the city, the noise of the sports pages crumpled and shared at the PMU. On the contrary, after the surprise of an initially slowed pace, The Temple Woods Gang is sublimated by the perfect association between the film about the robbery and the social commentary where a terrible class struggle is told.
With its sorrowful and vengeful character and its omnipotent villain, its thieves have been swept away by ultra-wealth and cynicism, The Temple Woods Gang is a unique and absolutely surprising film, which brilliantly blends the great genre cinema of the 70s with the social drama “made in France”.
Inspired by two true stories
For news buffs and readers of the judicial pages, the heist in Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s film may have resembled a real heist. In fact, as the director explained to the press, his film was inspired by a very similar robbery that took place in France and a highly publicized murder that took place abroad.
“Originally it was a news story that happened in 2014, during which a heavily armed gang from Seine-Saint-Denis attacked, on a junction of the A1 motorway near the Porte de La Chapelle, a black van carrying the personal effects of a Arab prince, one of the richest men in the world. (…) I found this news uplifting and had, so to speak, kept it in reserve until the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. I was stunned by both the brutality of the act and the impunity of such bloody violence, committed by high dignitaries so powerful that they believed themselves to be above the law and human justice. We decided to combine these two pieces of news and create a new scenario.“
The Temple Woods Gang can be (re)watched on MyCanal and is available there until August 1, 2024.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
