Le Grand frère (1982) - film review

Two French legionnaires, Rossi and Berger, crash-land in Africa.  Having shot his colleague and left him for dead, Rossi runs off with some of the cash their plane was carrying.   Berger survives his wound, however, and returns to France with a new identity, Bernard Vigo.  Here, he runs into Rossi, now a successful business man, involved with illicit drugs dealing.  Bernard kills Rossi, but the murder is witnessed by an Arab boy, Ali.  Bernard and Ali strike up an uneasy friendship and Bernard agrees to move in with Ali and his sister.  However, Ali’s motives for helping Bernard are far from altruistic.  He intends to use Bernard to avenge the murder of his elder brother...

In many ways, Le Grand frère, epitomes the French crime thriller of the 1980s – an imaginative plot, charged with gritty realism, spiced up with gratuitous (an generally unnecessary) sex, but let down by some pretty shallow characterisation.

Although Gérard Depardieu is well used in this film and he manages to give one of his most sympathetic and believable performances, the distinguished French actor appears strangely out of place in this film.  This is partly because we associate him with films from this period (the early 1980s) which are much more memorable and impressive than Le Grand frère – which looks pretty inconsequential when placed beside such triumphs as Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Danton.  It is also a reflection of the lacklustre cast which Depardieu finds himself in this film – although Hakim Ghanem is impressive by any standards as the mixed-up pre-teenage boy Ali.

The notion of the corrupt public figure and unsavoury police inspector is by now so familiar to be little more than a stereotype, and it is disappointing that this film does not go much beyond these bland stereotypes.  Similarly, the life of Ali and his family is so close to what we would expect that it hardly seems to shock us, even though it should.

In spite of its noticeable faults, the film generally stands up quite well.   Its messages may not be clear or particularly original, but the film manages to make a valid comment on modern society, whilst telling an original and moving love story.

© James Travers 2001

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