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The Army of Crime

L'armée du crime

France

2009

139 Min
Color
1.85:1
German, French
  • Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
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DIR Robert Guédiguian

PROD Dominique Barneaud

SCR Serge Le Péron, Gilles Taurand, Robert Guédiguian

DP Pierre Milon

CAST Virginie Ledoyen, Simon Abkarian, Robinson Stévenin, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Lola Naymark, Yann Trégouët, Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Ivan Franek, Adrien Jolivet, Serge Avédikian, Lucas Belvaux, Pascal Cervo, Alexandru Potocean, Esteban Carvajal-Alegria

ED Bernard Sasia

PROD DES Michel Vandestien

MUSIC Alexandre Desplat

Cannes (Out of Competition)

Synopsis

Paris, 1941. The poet Missak Manouchian leads a mixed bag of youngsters and émigrés in a clandestine battle against the Nazi occupation. Twenty-two men and one woman fighting for an ideal and for freedom. News of their daring attacks, including the assassination of an SS General, eventually reaches Berlin. Under the orders of the Gestapo, French police and collaborators hound Manouchian and his Résistants until, to escape torture, one of their associates denounces the whole group. After a show trial, the twenty-three heroes are brought to face a firing squad… —Cannes Film Festival

Director

Original

Robert Guédiguian

Robert Jules Guédiguian (born 3 December 1953 in Marseille) is a French film director, actor, screenwriter and producer. Most of his films star Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Pierre Darroussin.

Guédiguian is the son of a German mother and an Armenian father. He evokes his paternal roots in his 2006 film Le Voyage en Armenie. He has a working class background – his father a worker on the Marseille docks. He early became concerned with political questions and for a while was involved with the French Communist Party. In 2008 he joined the Left Party.

Like Marcel Pagnol and René Allio before him, he anchors his films in social reality, flirting with militancy. His films are strongly marked by the local and regional environment of the city of Marseille, and in particular L’Estaque, (north-west Marseille), for example in Marius et Jeannette. His latest film The Snows of Kilimanjaro premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. —Wikipedia 

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Michael Harbour

17Jan12

The film takes a long time to engage the viewer and traffics in mostly stock characters so we're rarely emotionally involved. Interesting, though. And with some good actors who's talents unfortunately aren't tested.

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msmichel

10Apr11

Guediguian took a rare step away from his modern humanism films to make this fairly pedestrain but watchable entry into "french resistance" cinema. A lot of his regular troupe appear in smaller roles with fairly good performances from the leads Simon Abkarian and Virginie Ledoyen. Guediguian has certainly made better but this one worth watching.

Picture of Reginald Healer Marcellin

Reginald Healer Marcellin

11Feb11

Disappointedly mediocre, despite the subject matter

Dorota

1Sep10

It was ok. Three stars is about right. Good topic, especially for me since my grandfather is from Armenia. Otherwise, nothing new in terms of this genre though.

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

"Soul Kitchen," "The Tillman Story," "Altiplano," More

By David Hudson on August 20, 2010

No film review will be read more eagerly this week than Scott Foundas's piece for the cover of the September/October issue of Film Comment

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Edifiant, mais sans passion

By hubertg​uillaud on March 15, 2010

L’armée du crime de Robert Guédiguian est un film édifiant, construit pour l’édification. Un film qui raconte d’une manière appliquée la vie exemplaire d’une poignée de résistants. Dommage que tout…  read review

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