Le Gang des Antillais (2016)
Directed by Jean-Claude Flamand-Barny

Film Review

Jean-Claude Flamand-Barny made his feature debut way back in 2005 with Nèg maron, a kind of Rebel Without a Cause set in the Caribbean.  Ten years on, he is back with his somophore offering, a retro-style thriller that looks uncannily like a blaxploitation flick of the 1970s.  Taken from Loïc Léry's autobiographical book, Le Gang des Antillais recounts a true story that resulted from a well-meaning government immigration initiative of the 1970s that went very badly wrong.  The important social context of Léry's book is almost completely lost in Flamand-Barny's film, which merely turns it into a fairly routine gangster thriller of the kind that now struggles to arouse much interest after the genre peaked with Jean-François Richet's Mesrine dipytch (2008) and Olivier Assayas's Carlos (2010) a few years ago.  What makes the film stand out is that it has a predominantly black cast.  The fact that this is still a rarity in French cinema tends to make the film's underlying social point (that blacks still get a raw deal in France) more effectively than the film itself does.

Film Synopsis

In the 1970s, the French government created a new agency known as BUMIDOM to help people from the country's overseas territories settle in mainland France.   Jimmy Larivière is one of the hopeful settlers who leaves his home on the island of Martinique to start a new life in France.  Once he has arrived in Paris, Jimmy has difficulty not only finding work but also being accepted by native French people.  He is left to raise his infant son by himself when his white partner abruptly leaves him.  Disillusioned and desperately in need of cash, he drifts easily into a life of crime, hooking up with a gang of small-time crooks of West Indian origin.  As the stakes are raised, Jimmy's criminal exploits take an increasingly bloody turn...