Le Dernier gang (2007)

Le Dernier gang is a French thriller film first released in 2007, directed by Ariel Zeitoun.  The film stars Vincent Elbaz, Gilles Lellouche, Sami Bouajila, Clémence Poésy and Pascal Elbé.  Our overall rating for this film is: very poor.


By the 1980s. a band of petty criminals – Simon, Bonner, Maxime and Merle – has become one of the most notorious gangs operating in France.  The audacity of their criminal exploits has made them the scourge of the police and a media phenomenon.  One man is determined to bring them to book, an unflinching cop named Milan.  He intends to capture Simon and his gang if it is the last thing he does...

Le Dernier gang is based on the exploits of the so-called Gang des Postiches, the most notorious bank robbing gangs in France of the 1980s.  It isn’t clear from this film whether we are meant to sympathise with the robbers or revile them; so shallow is the characterisation and so parodied the gangster portrayals that the crooks are little more than vanilla-flavoured comic-book stereotypes. Ariel Zeitoun’s direction is a frenetic as ever but needlessly so and rapidly becomes wearisome, robbing the film of focus and character depth.  French cinema generally has a good reputation of making this kind of film.  However, next to the recent Mesrine films, Le Dernier gang appears woefully inadequate - a bland action thriller which initially resembles a parody but ends up looking like a structureless fiasco.

© David Hopper 2011

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