A Gang Story (2011) poster
2011 · crime · drama

A Gang Story

Directed by Olivier Marchal1h 42m2011
ElsewhereIMDb6.99kRT50%
  • sombre
  • brisk
  • intense
Movie DNA

Sombre, kinetic, measured crime / drama, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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After growing up in a poor gypsy camp, Edmond Vidal, aka Momon, has retained a sense of family, unfailing loyalty and pride in his origins. Most of all, he has remained friends with Serge Suttel, with whom he first discovered prison life - for stealing cherries. The two of them inevitably got involved in organized crime. The team they formed, the Ganf Des Lyonnais, made them the most notorious armed robbers of the early 1970s. Their irresistible rise ended in 1974 with a spectacular arrest. Today, as he nears 60, Momon would like to forget that part of his life. He has found peace by retiring from the "business". He tends to his wife Janou, who suffered so in the past, and to his children and grandchildren, all of whom have great respect for this man of simple and universal values, so clear-headed and full of kindness. But then Serge Suttel, who has disowned nothing of his past, comes back into the picture.

Our read · A Gang Story (2011) reads as a sombre, kinetic, grounded crime · drama entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of A Gang Story

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want gritty Lyon crime loyalty spanning decades, French gangster-cinema style.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 20attention 3/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upgraphic violence

Skip it tonightYou dislike subtitles, heist-era brutality, or Marchal's unflinching crime sagas.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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