La Mentale (2002) - film review

Dris and Yanis are two old friends who chose crime as the way out of a life of social deprivation.  When he leaves prison after serving a four-year sentence for armed robbery, Dris decides to start a new life with his girlfriend Lise.  However, his resolution is short-lived.  Yanis puts pressure on him and in the end he has no option but to return to his former mobster way of life.  But the stakes are higher, and the risks far greater...

Despite its glossy surface presentation, La Mentale is a rather half-hearted attempt to breathe fresh life into the traditional French gangster film, a genre that was enormously popular in the ’70s and ’80s..  Although well-directed, and with some well-choreographed action scenes, the film feels insubstantial and pretty charmless, lacking a charismatic lead actor in the form of Alain Delon, and relying far too heavily on senseless violence and stock clichés.  Samy Naceri, the star of the huge popular Taxi films, is surprisingly good in this film (probably because his brother wrote the screenplay), but his co-star, Samuel Le Bihan, looks painfully out of place and fails to deliver a convincing performance.

© James Travers 2007

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