johnnyboyz
It's Guy Ritichie does Hotel Rwanda with splashes of the workmanlike 2000 Elmore Leonard novel "Pagan Babies" thrown in. Although to be fair, I'm fairly sure Irish writer/director for The Front Line David Gleeson didn't pitch it like that; moreover, the piece is a 'what if....?' project - a 'what if.....?' thuggish Irish mobsters, who'll no sooner kill you in ways that are terrifying and excruciating like you switch on a light, went up against hardened African warlord-types whom are hiding out in western Europe and have been responsible for some of the most senseless and most disturbing acts of a Civil War you're likely to see. Alas, the film is all too keen to test such a hypothesis; not a bad film, but an erratic one that leaps from intelligent low-level living immigration drama to heist movie to something resembling a cop show that looks like it was just plucked from a TV screen. Chuck in some swooping, often night-set, shots of cityscapes evoking the likes of better films within the genre, such as 1995's "Heat", and you have an admirable at best, all over the place at worst, piece which takes several cues from several things whilst biting off more than it can chew, but doing its utmost in the process.I looked Gleeson up and found an interview from around the time of The Front Line's release; I'm in admiration of what the man's done and is presently doing, that is to say writing and producing, with his own company, varying films along varying lines. Quite clearly, The Front Line has been made with the best of intentions and it would be nice to get behind the man and his actions because of his predicament, but one cannot help but feel it falls a little short. Eriq Ebouaney plays a Congolese immigrant named Joe Yumba who's seeking asylum in Dublin, a man with what appears to be a family consisting of a wife and a son as well as a chequered back-story involving taking sides in a specific Civil War which erupted in his native land. We can tell he feels for them in a specific way and that they have suffered together as a three via Gleeson's use of a memento in the form of a cassette tape overlying his bond to his son. This, while echoed voices and rapid flashbacks to nastier past times puts across the characteristics of a post-trauma.The man initially occupies a grotty hostel for foreigners whilst still awaiting clearance from the government – during this, we catch glimpses what he has fled, namely hostilities and violence of a relatively shocking magnitude. In this regard, and long by the time he has been garnered entry; allowed to have the rest of his family come over; placed in some housing and then have granted to him a job in a local bank as a security guard, we don't assume him to be much of a slouch when it comes to living the hard graft. After some teasing with a drawn out sequence involving bank vault codes and the reiteration of how secretive and important everything down there in that bank within which Joe works is, Gleeson confirms what already became somewhat obvious when he has Joe snatched from the streets and told by one of the more talkative of several local mobsters that he will aid them as their inside man in a bank robbery or have his family, whom have been kidnapped, killed.Thus begins Joe's quest to do something brave and heroic in trying to save a life, two in fact, when in the past he worked with certain other men, of whom have additionally fled to Dublin, in trying to end lives. The talkative gangster, James Frain's Eddie, does not strike us as the sort of person one crosses in as much it is established he's killed police officers in the past and has some of the more fruiter ideas for interrogation of which cross-pollinate with hard fetishism. The film, effectively a continuation of a tale of redemption which follows the protagonist on from the African continent, uses its premise to weave a tale that is mostly good value, if curiously uninteresting on the whole. The film has more fun depicting than we do following Joe doing his best to try and restore some parity to his situation; the police, led by a Detective Inspector named Harbison (McSorley), get in on the act a little more we would've liked as they try to apprehend a man in Joe they were already suspicious of, while a bigoted bank live-in caretaker has the revision of his racist beliefs wedged in there amongst all of it. I admire the film's pulpy, cut down attitude to the majority of its material but a lot of it sits uneasily with everything else. You can sense there is an idea buried in there somewhere; that there is a mind at work taking something along the lines of a heist formula, whilst trying to encompass true-to-life tragedies always difficult to deal with, and attempting to etch something out engaging and something fresh where there really ought not be. Alas, the film is an admirable failure; a piece tempting you into checking out other work by that of the chief contributers, but on the whole having you wish everything had come together just that tiny bit more adeptly.
dfgrayb
What starts off looking like a routine action thriller about a bank heist gradually becomes something much more. Eriq Ebouaney is a security guard at a bank, whose family is kidnapped to force him to assist in the robbery.The film is in many respects a revisiting of the John Wayne/John Ford classic The Searchers, in that the viewer gradually realizes that the ostensible plot (the bank robbery) is not really at the center of the film. Just as in The Searchers, where the film is really about Wayne's search to find his own humanity and not his niece who has been captured by the Comanches, so too in The Front Line, Ebouaney's pursuit to rescue his family is his search to find his own redemption as a human being. Over the course of the film, because of the fine performances and direction, we are drawn into Ebouaney's internal pain and love, and we almost want to say to him "Be at peace. Your soul is good." This is a remarkable and moving film. Successful on many levels. Ebouaney's performance is stunning. The plot, which begins as a bank robbery, becomes a story that is breathtakingly beautiful, powerful, and unforgettable.
greenbuff
The Front Line marks a major watershed in Irish cinema. Addressing issues of immigration and the horrors of genocide in Africa in a contemporary thriller which plays out on the streets of Dublin, David Gleeson has raised the bar considerably for an Irish film. The director's previous film, Cowboys and Angels, which he also wrote, stands as one of the best Irish films of the last decade. Deceptively simple and light in tone Gleeson addressed similar issues of alienation and broke new ground even then by moving away from the ponderous and the frankly dour image which Irish films hitherto presented of Ireland.Although a very different film and working with a much larger budget, The Front Line is a more rewarding cinematic experience. Graced with a hypnotic central performance from Eriq Ebouaney the film grips from the opening set up in the Garda Immigration bureau.Supporting cast are exceptional with outstanding turns from Fatou N'Diaye as Kala and Hakeem Kae Kazim as the sinister and hugely charismatic Erasmus. James Frain turns in a chilling performance as the scariest bad guy ever to roam the streets of Dublin. Patrick Cassidy's music also deserves particular praise.I can't think of any other film with which to compare this. Perhaps Dirty Pretty Things comes closest but for emotional impact this is a far richer experience.
