DVD reviews
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The film falters, with too many stories to follow all at once...
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The Dead
...impressively original...
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Le Petit Criminel (The Little Gangster) (DVD)
Year:
Rating: M
Distributor: Universal
The Film: 3.5
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5
This is an affecting take on the story of a social outcast. Jobbing French film director Jacques Doillon (A Woman's Revenge, Family Life) gets reasonably good performances from his cast, and he really needs them, because this is a three-hander where the dialogue and relationships have to carry the whole movie. The eponymous young criminal, Marc (Gerald Thomassin, looking a bit like a young Mark Wahlberg), is a confused tearaway who robs a store at gunpoint and, in the subsequent bungle, gets caught up with a sympathetic cop (Richard Anconina). It turns out that what Marc really wants is to see his long lost mother, and the movie turns into a road trip when he takes the cop hostage to try and get to her.
All this indicates a minor French film worth rediscovering. You have to wonder, however, what persuaded the distributors to put this out dubbed into English? Dubbing voice-overs are okay for a laugh in C-grade Italian horror films, but it more or less ruins this film's chances. The main problem is that the voice assigned to the teenage Marc is that of a middle aged man! It's just audio vandalism. Wait for the subtitled version.