Mea Culpa.

To be fair this latest outing from Fred Cavaye is the standard fodder we have come to expect from this French director/writer following such movies as Point Blank (2010) and Anything for Her (2008). We either get stubble laden Vincent Lindon (Bastards 2013, Mademoiselle Chambon 2009) or stubble laded Gilles Lellouche (Little White Lies 2010, Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec 2010) in his latest movie Mea Culpa (2014) we get both actors i.e. double the stubble! Then add a beautiful lead actress Nadine Labaki (Caramel 2007), lots of leather jackets, guns, high speed chases and violence and some really mean looking East European gangsters who do more killing than talking. If you have been following Olivier Marchal’s French TV series Braquo you’ll know exactly what I mean!

Fast, gritty, with lots of graphic violence for violence sake and totally unbelievable were both the good guys and the bad guys are equally thuggish and prepared to kill their fellow human beings at the drop of a hat.  Lindon plays Simon an ex policeman following a drunken driving incident where three people including a young child are killed. Separated from wife Alice (Labaki) and young son Theo he now works for a security company but is still friends with Franck (Lellouche) who is still in the force. Bringing the action back up to date the East European gangsters are driving around Toulon bumping off various low lifes in their sordid drug-dealing world. While at a bullfight, yes that’s right a bullfight, with his mum and her man Simon’s son Theo witnesses our Serbian gangster’s dispensing of a chap in the gents toilet, they see him and give chase.  You’ve probable guest by now that the rest of the film involves Simon and his ex cop partner trying to stop his son being killed and you would not be far wrong!  A film for lads of both sexes!