Group Violence (2015) User Reviews

Cassel shines in this gritty realistic character study

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 10 August 2017]

"Violence en réunion" is a French French-language short film from 2015, so still a relatively new work. It was written and directed by Karim Boukercha and given his lack of experience I believe he did a solid job in both fields. It also helps having Vincent Cassel on board obviously, who is perfect for the part of an aging violent thug struggling with his life and facing the imminent danger of being sucked back in the abyss of street crime. The burka part also mentioned here on IMDb is fairly minor really. It is part of the character study of the man I just described. Overall, script is mediocre sometimes, maybe a bit weak with the group at the very end, but also good at other times. Cassel is certainly better than the 6 stars out of 10 I give this film. Pretty much a flawless performance and I do believe these 15 minutes here could also be turned in a quality full feature film to be honest. If Cassel reappears, I'd certainly watch it at some point. Thumbs up for this quarter of an hour. It was a good watch. Of course you will need subtitles if you aren't fluent in French.

What the f.....???

[searchanddestroy-1 · 4 August 2023]

I waited for something different from what I finally got in this complex story. I did not get where the plot lead to. I watched it several times but it became more and more complicated for my tiny brain. Vincent Cassel is excellent, so excellent that I could not prevent myself to think of LA HAINE, the famous movie which lauched Vincent Cassel's career, nearly thirty years ago, and twenty years before this short feature. The surroundings of this story seems to be the link to Cassel's character, here,in a French ghetto, against the police. But besides this, I did not understand anything; that's the problem with short films; you always have to decrypt.