Mea Culpa (2014)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Brilliant and touching

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I've tried on a few occasions (mainly because I have a bad memory) to watch this film but it is SO dire that I have never achieved my goal. Life is short! Don't waste it on this amateur nonsense!

I probably wasn't originally going to watch this French movie, but the plot sounded mildly interesting, and I do like to try new foreign language films every so often. Basically Franck (Gilles Lellouche) and Simon (Vincent Lindon) work as colleagues together in the police, but their lives have taken a tailspin. Following an accident years ago, where Simon was driving a car whilst drunk, they crashed, and it caused the deaths of three people in the collision. Since then, Simon has lost his job and become estranged from his family, and Franck has a guilty conscience. A series of murders have taken place in Toulon, Simon's son witnesses one of these murders, the ruthless killers are hunting for him, and the whole family is in danger. Slowly Simon and Franck come back together to investigate the crimes, catch the killers and save Simon's family. They detect a killer who works for a Serbian mafia gang, the criminals will stop at nothing to follow through on their mission, but neither will the two police men. It all comes to confrontation on a train, where the officers and the criminals come face to face, of course good defeats evil, but also, the truth about the drunken car accident is revealed. In fact, both men had been drinking, but it was Franck that was driving the car, he assumed that Simon was already dead in the accident, he switched his body into the driver's seat to save his own skin, when he realised he was alive, therefore he felt guilty, for breaking his family up, but everything is sorted in the end. Also starring Nadine Labaki as Alice, Gilles Cohen as Pastor, Max Baissette de Malglaive as Théo, Medi Sadoun as Jacquet, Velibor Topic as Milan, Cyril Lecomte as Jean-Marc, Gilles Bellomi as Andrei and Sacha Petronijevic as Pietr. It is pretty simple story, a disgraced cop trying to prove himself and get his family back after gangsters come after them, there are some eye-catching action, chase and shoot-up sequences to keep up the pace, but it is fairly predictable, the twist ending is relatively alright, overall it is an average crime thriller. Worth watching!

Simon was a police officer in Toulon until he was involved in a car crash, after a bout of heavy drinking, which left three people dead. He went to prison and his marriage broke down but he finds himself working with his old partner again after his young son witnesses the latest killing in a drug related gang war. These thugs will stop at nothing to eliminate any witnesses but Simon, and his friend Franck, will do what it takes to stop them.If you are hoping for gritty realism you are likely to be disappointed; but if you want lots of action then you could do a lot worse. There are chases, both on foot and in cars, fights and shootouts. It all leads to an impressive final confrontation aboard a train as numerous killers close in on Simon and his family. This action is pretty exciting and at times quite brutal. Vincent Lindon and Gilles Lellouche do in impressive job as Simon and Franck; their characters have a good chemistry and make their characters feel real. The final scene does feature an unexpected, and to my mind unnecessary, twist although it didn't spoil my enjoyment of what had gone before. Overall this is a solid thriller; I'd certainly recommend it to fans of the genre.These comments are based on watching the film in French with English subtitles.

A very disappointing movie for me as Point Blank (2010) is my favourite French movie and the director of that movie also directed this.It starts off extremely confusing with a incoherent plot line of clips taking place in the present time mixed with random flashbacks, get's slightly more coherent perhaps 25 minutes in or so but by then I had pretty much given up on the movie.Felt like it was originally 2 hours or something but then cut down to 90 minutes because it was too slow for them to label it a action-movie and thought fast cuts = action.And then we get a scene of (real) animal-torture from a bullfighting arena where we get to see a matador sticking knives (again real) into the innocent bull while the crowd cheers in excitement, which was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me.Well-made action-scenes though, once the action actually get started.