The Fall of the American Empire (2018) poster
2018 · comedy · crime · drama · thriller

The Fall of the American Empire

Directed by Denys Arcand2h 7m2018
ElsewhereIMDb6.94kRT60%Metacritic55
Movie DNA

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

How every film is hand-scored →

A shy and insecure delivery driver arrives on the scene of a robbery-gone-wrong and picks up two bags of cash and hides them in his truck. He is interrogated by two tough police detectives and manages to evade suspicion but he is warned that whoever owns the money will be looking for it. Only the help of a prostitute and a former biker recently released from jail might get him out of trouble.

Our read · The Fall of the American Empire (2018) reads as a neutral, kinetic, grounded comedy · 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.

Video previewNo trailer available for this one.
Where the cast leads
Where to watch
Not on streaming here right now.Check JustWatch Check Letterboxd
More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of The Fall of the American Empire

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a clever Quebec crime caper with moral dilemmas and unlikely allies.

ends warmit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 10attention 3/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upnuditygraphic violence

Skip it tonightYou dislike French-language films or crime stories with sex and violence.

If The Fall of the American Empire is your film
The Decline of the American Empire (1986)
same director on society and relationships
(you want action and heist)
Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006)
Canadian bilingual crime buddy comedy
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
smart heist comedy with moral twists
(you want darker more serious tone)
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
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself