We doff our baseball cap to Nabil Ben Yadir. His film Les barons was hailed by critics and audiences alike, and it made him a famous Brussels local. Instead of milking his success, he made two completely different films.
The first was a French road movie about an anti-racist demonstration (La marche), while his new film is a hardboiled Flemish thriller which is as dark and beautiful as the Flemish noir D'Ardennen.
A menacing Peter Van den Begin plays a police commissioner in Antwerp who leaves the force to join a far-right party. One final intervention in Charleroi sets in motion a series of events that drag his loved ones, and ultimately the whole country into a downward spiral.
The tension suffers from a shaky, occasionally implausible script, but the film's biggest handicap is the political climax: last year, it would have been stunning, but reality has caught up with it and made it outdated. Which is rotten luck because Nabil Ben Yadir has lots of fantastic ideas.
> Dode hoek/Angle mort. BE, 2016, dir.: Nabil Ben Yadir, act.: Peter Van den Begin, Soufiane Chilah, Jan Decleir, 105 min.
> Kinepolis, White Cinema
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