The World War Two resistance movie genre has been reinventing itself recently. After a long and established tradition of films focusing on the struggles of partisans in Nazi-occupied France, the searchlight has been trained on similar tales of resistance by brave Norwegians (Max Manus: Man Of War), Danes (Flame And Citron) and Belarusians (Defiance).
Army Of Crime, directed by Robert Guédiguian, may be set in the more familiar cinematic territory of wartime Paris, but it tells the equally unheralded true story of an eclectic group of émigrés, intellectuals, communists and youths who conducted an ongoing underground battle against the German army and the collaborating French police. Led by Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (played by Simon Abkarian), these 22 men and one woman – Missak’s wife Mélinée (Virginie Ledoyen) – were an increasingly irritating thorn in the side of the Nazis.
Like Rachid Bouchareb’s Days Of Glory from 2007, which highlighted the contribution of Algerian servicemen to France’s war effort and their subsequent appalling treatment by generations of postwar French governments, Army Of Crime is clearly an important film. As befits his subject, Guédiguian weaves the complicated stories of the various freedom fighters – many of whom would warrant a film of their own – into a cohesive narrative, while the entire cast deliver fine performances. The period detail is also convincingly authentic, as the city of lights is depicted as a dark-hearted home of treachery and betrayal.
Unfortunately, Guédiguian's viande et pommes de terre directing style leaves this chronicle of remarkable heroism feeling curiously flat. Dramatic tension often unravels thanks to anticlimactic scene changes, while a number of important developments occur off camera. Apart from one - literally - gut-churning scene, the horrors of living a jackboot-shadowed existence are suggested rather than depicted. The film cries out for the nerve-shredding touch of a Jean-Pierre Melville, whose 1969 French resistance masterpiece Army Of Shadows held the viewer in a vice-like grip from beginning to end.
Army Of Crime is a solid addition to the genre, but it could have been irresistible.
Army Of Crime (Optimum Home Entertainment) is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.
Colin Houlson
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