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November

This tautly directed police procedural is based on the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, specifically how the anti-terror squad dealt with the investigation and a potential follow-up bombing. Director (and co-writer with Olivier Demangel and number of 'scenario consultants'), Cedric Jimenez is carving a niche for himself in the 'no nonsense, muscular but cool crime/terror' genre, with films like The Connection, BAC Nord and Under Watch, as well as an adaptation of the Laurent Binet book, HHhH, The Man with the Iron Heart.

As with many films of this ilk, it's full of impassioned phone conversations, whippy camera movements indicating a melee of barking activity, and tension-raising scenes where something goes momentarily wrong, only to be saved at the last minute. The performances are suitably stoic, to the point of near parody (honestly, there's a rizla paper between Jean Dujardin's work here and his great turn in Deerskin), but on the whole, there's the right amount of dourness for the subject matter. Anaïs Demoustier and Lyna Khoudri provide the heart, as a junior detective and a desperate informant respectively.

Aside from the predicament involving Khoudri's Samia, there's precious little screen time allocated to the motives of the terrorists or even the effects the hunt had on the minorities of France. Sure enough, murderous fundamentalists may not deserve too deep a dive, but the whole film was pretty obdurate in its militarism, wrapped up with an uncomfortable 'promise' at the climax.

A reasonably solid doco-inflected drama. Enjoyable, though not without reservations.

November was part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival and is showing at Palace and Luna cinemas from May 11th.

See also:

There are similarities with Peter Berg's surprisingly watchable The Kingdom (2007), and for a different era of terrorism, have a peep at Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973).

VERY MILD SPOILERS IN POD...

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