disgusting, overrated, pointless

Absolutely Fantastic

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Very handsome young gangster wants to leave the family business and lead a normal life but he needs money so one last heist.Other reviewers cover the story in detail so I will not and just give my overall impressions.No, this is not a great movie. However it is OK and entertaining.The production values are low rent trying to be high rent. What do I mean? Well there are great shots from the air but they don't grab you like they do in a comparable film like Anthony Zimmerman.The story is predictable and full of holes....you don't attack an airport and plane any more without getting the entire national defence force down on you--France has lots of Mirage fighters and so forth that would have been scrambling.I guess overall this is pretty good boiler plate gangster flic avec un accent Français. There are many better The Double Hour, The Aura etc....

Although I mainly watch American films, I make a point of watching foreign films every so often for variety and to see a genre possibly done in a different way. When I saw this at the video store, I thought: "Cool! Jean Reno is a colorful actor, and the video box art and the title of the movie suggest that this will be jam-packed with action and suspense!" I rented it, took it home... and I was very disappointed. I could make a long list about everything that disappointed me about this movie. For starters, Jean Reno is in less of the movie than you might think. And as for action, there is almost no action in the entire running time! Still, the movie could have worked by showing us interesting drama or colorful and interesting other characters. But that's not what happens. The plot is VERY slow-moving, with a lot of boring chat that doesn't advance things very much. And the movie looks and sounds weird; the cinematography has a soft, washed-out look you often see in French movies, and the audio doesn't crackle with life (such as the fact that scene after scene goes by with no musical score in the background.) In fact, the movie has more of a made-for-TV feel than a theatrical film feeling.I'll still take a chance on foreign films in the future, whether they are French or not. But I'll be more careful in my selections. I now know that foreign film companies can be like American film companies, promising something but delivering something else - and that "something else" not being very good at all.

That statement of the Greek historian Herodotus chimes in with this movie whereby both of Malakian's sons were killed during gunfights with the police. Sticked in my memory; previously in Troy(2004) when his son Hector got killed, the King of Troy had gone to knee before Achilles and also very famously in Godfather(1972), Marlon Brando's character had endured in silence of his son Sonny's assassination. There are more examples to that case in earlier movies, yet those were the most remarkable ones for me. Jean Reno played the heartless father here, he caused the death of his son. His way of playing the role of his character was mediocre and occasionally it set out several instabilities.It wouldn't even have surprised me when Reno began crying whilst holding his son's corpse, who got killed trying to save his life. The main reason for that is because there was not a sign of concord between Jean Reno and Gaspard Ulliel. It wouldn't be wrong to compare Ulliel and Reno here, since it's very clear to eye that Reno gave one of his worst performances while Ulliel giving his best. Yet, even after this comparison, even Reno played his worst performance while Ulliel played his best; still Reno acted better. So, if you are watching Le Premier Cercle for one of these stars you won't like the movie. Oppositely, if you liked the movie you won't like the performances of the stars here.Le Premier Cercle continues the endless tales of immigrant crime stories that Jean-Christophe Grangé brought to mind. A family escapes from the Armenian holocaust during the World War-I in Turkey. By time the family get involved in the illegal trade of sensitive items and weapons with overseas. When history leaves its heritage to the power of the underworld empire in our present time, we know that no matter what thriller story is created the result is always same: Whoever has the power and the authority wins the lawsuit.Almost one third of this film is dealing with the common rat race between the police and the mafia. The next one third slice is crime and action which is not offering anything special or new. Finally the last one third section(apart from the erotic and dramatic segments) is a must-see suspense. Accordingly those segments come to vision very purely that editing is so simplemindedly offering us an easy-to-watch popcorn flick.The actual wonderingly awaited scenes ,which are mixed brilliantly with suspense and high tension, start when you feel that the story has begun to create a new and unexpected story. Plot has been installed with a high potential, such that when the story begins to expand; it becomes like a puzzle with "How?" and "Why?" questions coming to mind, which are getting their answers at the end. It's a film that heroes and stars die, villains live. When the moment comes shocking incidents begin to occur and from now on it's hard to guess what happens next. I strongly advise Le Premier Cercle to anybody who likes surprise suspenses.

I was very surprised and pleased to watch this fairly good french crime actionner. I did not expect so much. First, I tried it because it's a gangster film. But I don't like Jean Reno. Except in LE GRAND BLEU, or LEON - THE PROFESSIONNAL - he's always been bad actor, a lousy one. In this movie, he's perhaps not at his best but his character is rather convincing. A gang leader whose the son - Ulliel - doesn't want to follow his father's group in his criminal activities; robberies under violence. This sounds familiar but the action sequences are pretty well done. especially during the heist one, nearly the end. It reminds me an actual event, a daring robbery which occurred in France in August 1996, on the Perpignan Airport. But that's another story.What's interesting in this feature is that it is not the good guys vs the bad guys scheme. The cop played by Bouadjila is not usual. He is not the sympathetic cop, but without being the nasty one either. Interesting indeed.And, above all, the end is ABSOLUTELY surprising.NO ONE would bet on it!!!And I love that.