Mains armées (2012)
Directed by Pierre Jolivet

Film Review

Pierre Jolivet hasn't yet got round to directing a musical comedy western but it's probably only a matter of time before he does so.  French cinema's most eclectic filmmaker has already worked his way though every other genre in the dozen or so films he has made over the past three decades.  His latest mix-and-match offering, Mains armées (a.k.a. Armed Hands), is a full-bodied conflation of police procedural thriller and psychological drama, a rough and tumble piece that is a world apart from the cosy social comedies for which he is best known.  This time, however, Jolivet appears to have bitten off far more than he can chew.  Whilst the film is hard to fault technically and is bolstered by some superb work on the acting front, it is badly let down by a plot that is overly complicated and a tad formulaic.  Mains armées attempts to cram far too much into too small a space and the result is a grimly intense movie experience that has many plus points but falls way short of being completely satisfying.

The film's main redeeming feature is that it is extremely well cast.  Jolivet regular Roschdy Zem is a perfect choice for the central role of Lucas, a seasoned cop who knows how to use a gun but has no idea how to heal the rift with his estranged daughter, admirably played by Leïla Bekhti, an equally inspired piece of casting.  Since her appearance in Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (2009), Bekhti has emerged as one of France's most promising young actresses, achieving national celebrity and plaudits galore through Hervé Mimran's hit comedy Tout ce qui brille (2010).  Zem and Bekhti had first worked together (playing brother and sister) in Mauvaise foi (2006), Zem's directorial debut feature, and they complement one another perfectly.  The qualities that make Zem such a compelling actor in this kind of film - a tough, implacable exterior that belies the tormented feelings and fragility beneath - are to be found in Bekhti's equally nuanced performance, but in a more raw and slightly less controlled form.   You can easily kid yourself that they are father and daughter.

The film's best scenes are those in which Zem and Bekhti are brought together, their characters struggling to make the connection that they both desperately want.  It's a pity that Jolivet didn't see fit to make more of the relationship between Lucas and his daughter - this should have been the crux of the film and not, as it appears, a sloppily bolted on afterthought.  Another acting revelation is Marc Lavoine, cast against type as a crooked and quite vicious cop (Bekhti's superior in the anti-drugs squad).  We are more accustomed to seeing Lavoine in sympathetic roles in mundane comedies, so it is quite a shock to watch him play an out-and-out villain, and doing it with such chilling conviction. Jolivet's son Adrien (another very competent actor) also has a smallish role in the film, although his main contribution was the film's atmospheric score, which he composed with his friend Sacha Sieff.

Jolivet wrote the script in collaboration with Simon Michaël, an ex-cop who has worked on most of his films as well as several films by Claude Zidi (including the popular Ripoux films).  It is worth noting that Michaël co-scripted Philippe Lefebvre's Une nuit (2012), a similarly realist policier that also had Roschdy Zem in the role of a no-nonsense Parisian cop.  Because Une nuit and Mains armées were released within a few months of one another, and have the same star actor in a virtually identical role, it is inevitable that they should be compared.  Both films attempt to give a modern spin to the traditional French policier, but whereas Unit nuit is a masterpiece of economy, a focussed and generally well-structured film, Mains armées is clearly a lesser work, a convoluted, lumbering behemoth that struggles to keep itself going and ultimately loses its way in a maze of lazy plot contrivances.

It is a shame that Jolivet didn't cast a more critical eye over his script before he started shooting it, because in every other respect Mains armées is an almost flawless production.  The performances are compelling, Jolivet's mise-en-scène is as vigorous and pacy as ever and Thomas Letellier's austere cinematography gives the film the stylish brutality that is appropriate for a modern film noir.  The set-pieces are a little overblown but are generally well orchestrated, although the quieter, more intimate scenes are far more effective, allowing the three lead actors (Zem, Bekhti and Lavoine) to inject some emotion and character depth into the proceedings.  Overall, Mains armées compares reasonably well with most of today's hard-edged crime-thrillers, but it could have been so much more if only Jolivet and Michaël had been less fixated with the mechanics of the plot and were able to squeeze a little more genuine human feeling into the drama.

Film Synopsis

Lucas Scali is 46, a police chief who is on the trail of illegal arms traffickers in Marseille.  Having uncovered a large criminal network that is involved in stealing NATO weapons and drugs smuggling, Lucas heads off for Paris to link up with a narcotics squad.  It so happens that the person Lucas teams up with is Maya, a 25 year-old rookie cop who is his daughter, the daughter he has not seen since he separated from her mother...