User Reviews

A French crime thriller by Pierre Jolivet, shown lately on a cable channel showed a lot of promise, so we decided to watch. A Marseille based detective, Lucas Scali, is following the trail of a Serbian gang trafficking arms belonging to NATO, stolen from the conflict in that country. Scali and his team follow the criminals to Paris, where his estranged daughter, Maya, also a police detective has been involved in an investigation with illegal drugs being pushed by the same Serbian criminals.

The encounter of father and daughter could not have been less auspicious. Maya, working with a dirty police superior, Julien Bass, has been sharing illicit money and drugs, from the different busts all over Paris. Maya resentment on a father she only saw on rare occasions, comes to work with her own team. Her loyalty to Bass comes into play as she realizes the judgment error in teaming up with a dirty superior as she joins forces with her father's team, something that will make her reflect on aspects of her life breaking the same laws she was asked to uphold.

The basic problem with the screenplay lies in the fact that most things remain unexplained as the actions meanders wildly all over the place without logic. Mr. Jolivet wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Simon Michael. The cast is headed by Roschdy Zem, a busy actor in the French screen. He is made up as an older man, in contrast with most of his other roles. Best in the film is Leila Bekhti, who is excellent as the woman playing both sides of the law. Marc Lavoine does justice to Bass, the dirty detective. The supporting players do good following M. Jolivet's direction.

I have never understand the impulse to do cop movie, especially when it's about running after the famous powder. When you count all the lives lost, all the family destroyed, all the investigations and budget allowed for so little result, you are worthy to ponder.

Here, you have got a clear illustration of this poor administration : there isn't one single police but a lot of offices, each one in charge of a particular crime and not trusting the other. Thus, versatile criminals are a bit hard to catch. Beyond this, the cops are obsessed by the flagrant arrest : they never want to stop the little fish, they always want to catch the big head. So, they listen, they investigate, they patient and it always ends in a bloody gunfight !

In addition, this movie is a bit a bore as every one is grumpy : no ones is happy, the cop father, the cop daughter, the cop boss, the cop co-worker, the gangsters. This loud drama is increased by the locations : derelict, old, rusty, cloudy, this Paris look like rather a under developed country ! And now, even french productions are infected by the modern plague : i mean the mobile phone because in terms of filmmaking, shooting a conversation is ground zero.

At last, if Zem is right, i can't believe Leila as a vindictive daughter and an aspirant cop. Worst, she dresses with rags and we are left wondering about her fate.

In conclusion, it's not a stinker but there's little to make happy either !

Pierre Jolivet is not a crime movie specialist, but not a bad director either. Especially for telling fair psychological stories. He knows how to describe the relations between his characters, their feelings, their emotions. In this film, the plot line details are pretty hard to follow, and have not much importance. The story focuses, emphasize on the relationship between a cop - Rochdy Zem - and his daughter, a cop too. Zem works in a squad fighting war weapons from Serbia, while his daughter is in an anti drug flying unit. The characters are all very convincing, and the Marc Lavoine's one, as a cop not so sympathetic, is rather unusual, interesting. We find here some good action sequences, but unfortunately the feature may deceive some audiences, as far there is no real ending in this film.

Yes folks, no ending at all...That's unusual too.

But after all, why not?

Habits may sometimes be disturbed.

Some cop named Scali is told by an informant that he's being offered military weapons. The cops tells him to go for it. The guy says he doesn't have money. The cop answers unhelpfully that the guy will figure something out. The guy meets with the bad guys who are Serbian. The cops monitor the meeting, they look in the Serbians's car, photograph the weapons. Because the informant has no money, he gets a good beating from the Serbians and they vanish.

Next we meet some narcotics team raiding an apartment. One guy escapes with a tiny police girl named Maya chasing him. They stop, he gives her a bunch of money and leaves.

The weapons cops mount some operation to put transmitters in some trucks that belong to the bad guys. That takes them to Paris where the narcotics unit works. Scali makes contact with Maya. At first it looks like they are romantically involved. Later we learn that they are estranged father and daughter.

We meet a whole bunch of people on the respective teams. Scali has some pregnant girl on his team who starts vomiting every couple of minutes but won't tell her boyfriend. We meet Scali's ex-wife for some reason. Maya stashes money, and occasionally uses drugs. Her boss is one corrupt creepy guy who is involved with all his female officers.

The thing is that these weapons belong to NATO, and Scali doesn't want to make some international fuss about it because then they'll take the case away from him (?). They keep investigating the Serbians and find the warehouse where they keep the weapons after a whole bunch of botched attempts. Meanwhile Maya who doesn't know anything about this, but in her drug investigations comes across the same Serbians. Scali mounts an operation to catch the bad guys with the weapons. Problem is that same moment Maya is going after them as well.

I had high hopes for Mains Armées as the French have produced strong cop movies, but this one is just poor. Things start out alright with the cop work but a few minutes later everybody is asking everybody else about their boyfriends/girlfriends/husband/wives--work be damned. It sure is realistic as law enforcement people are dramatic and love drama in their lives. But still, we could have done without it in this movie. Another problem is that we have nondescript forgettable villains. It would have been better to learn something about them instead of seeing so much about the intimate lives of the cops. What is worst perhaps is the uncharismatic multicultural lead that adds nothing to the movie.

What this movie has going for it are some strong basics, some interesting close calls between cops and bad guys, and that much of this movie is filmed outdoors so we actually get to see some uncommon sights of France. While most Hollywood movies that are allegedly filmed overseas show nothing of the places, this movie takes advantage of the sights. It looks a bit too colorless and lifeless, just like the movie itself, but it's refreshing to see so much filmed outside and during the day on top of that, instead of at night, in darkness, in rain.

Main Armees could use a remake, one that's shorter, tighter more focused on action and thrills.