November

The skilled Cedric Jimenez has already made the excellent The Connection and The Stronghold, so every new film of his is worth looking forward to (as with Olivier Marchal, who tends to be a French guarantee of quality when it comes to manly and tough films). This time, however, Jimenez chose a weaker moment with me. The film admittedly benefits from a strong and realistic premise: Black Friday of November 2015, when terrorist attacks took place in Paris. What bothered me the most was that Jimenez skipped the attacks themselves, so the best part of the film isn't really there – I wanted another Hotel Mumbai! Instead, the director focuses on the anti-terrorist forces trying to catch the suspects of the attacks during a five day deployment. There's a lot of investigation, interrogation, but I found it quite uninteresting. I was intrigued by the finale, which at least has a SWAT raid in action and there was a hint of suspense, but otherwise I found it unnecessarily slow and not as interesting as it should be for the premise. Some have compared the film to the American Zero Dark Thirty, but I thought that was a level better. But those who like films based on true events and anything with terrorists will not be disappointed. The craftsmanship and the acting are good. 6/10. (15.02.2023)