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THE CODE (LA MENTALE) Send This Review to a Friend
The difference between this film and other gangster melodramas is that the main characters involved in underworld warfare in France have ethnic North African backgrounds and the story plunges us into their particular milieu. Otherwise, there's merely the cliched story of one ex-con trying to go straight and his best friend pulling him back into the mire.
In the film directed by Manuel Boursinhac from a screenplay by Bibi Naceri, Dris, played by Samuel Le Bihan, a newly popular actor with a certain amount of charisma, is determined to leave his old life behind and make a fresh start with wife. But hot-headed Yanis, played with a fierce attitude by Sammy Naceri (brother of the screenwriter), won't let him. When Yanis gets into difficulties, Dris can't stand aside.
The gritty, no-punches-pulled action escalates, as do the gangland violence and macho posturing. We get a close up of this rising underworld, but in the end, it is plodding through familiar plot territory occupied by less familiar characters. A Samuel Goldwyn release.
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