Black (2015)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Orpheus is already with a woman, but leaves her without giving her an official reason, and travels to the underworld literally, to get Eurydice back as doom follows her and death is inevitable, while Orpheus's ex paroles in envy and finally causes them both to fall. It's not Romeo and Juliet at all, who even thought of that? When you watch this film, you will see my summary of Orpheus and Eurydice matches way more than R&J.This film also needs to be named Gangs instead. It isn't about being black, it's about being a gang member. Japanese gangs gang rape each other, Chinese, Indian, the British gang rape each other, French, Italian, Russian, Hispanic...every race and country has its underworld and there will be rapes. So the opening scene is annoyingly offensive and inaccurate to show a girl being raped by a gang while rap music ("black" music) is playing, as the title Black appears on the screen. It singles out black men as rapists and that women are prey to black men. The film also shows a one-sided, demonising look at gang culture: the black gang. It doesn't show the antics and crimes of the Moroccan/Flemish gang throughout the film like it showed the black gang life. But if you use some critical thinking you will see the real villains here are the racists that shove blacks and foreigners in a corner, pressuring them to resent and therefore to go against each other.Nothing about this film is about being black except Marwan's racist friends and family towards black people. And it's actually what sets off the closing scene, which did make me cry. But I probably would've cried if it was two white teens in this same setting that the film was shot (very nicely, by the way, must say). Because it's a shame. You want to love someone and stupid people you know tear you apart for dumb reasons. The Moroccan and Brussels racism is what causes the fateful sticky end for the two lead roles because if it wasn't for Marwan's ex girlfriend a white girl jealously pitting Marwan and his new black girlfriend and her gang against each other, then the other half of the movie would've never happened. You will see. So it's not that Marwan and Mavela are wrong for loving each other, it's that Marwan's friends are seedy assholes, and his brother was mad because he was with a black girl. Exacerbating the rage, however, are the ills of the gang Mavela is a part of. But that's because they're a gang, they just happen to be black. It's not because they're black.Now some stuff was cute and nicely done. The Moroccan cop tough loving Marwan, and the black cop protecting Mavela, simultaneously though shown separately. And how they each console Marwan and Mavela in the last scene; it shows a sort of cycle: that nonwhite cops are evermore tied into the youth gangs of people from their own cultures. The dilemma they face. They have a job to do but empathise with these kids. That was basically touched upon here. The film was 1 hr 30 minutes. If it had divulged the quadruple relationships between the two cops and the two young lovers the film would've been 10, 15 minutes longer; so the length shows there were some voids in the plot and character development. But for what it had it was okay as a whole, with some great moments and visuals in between. I also like that Marwan and Mavela's relationship started rather simply, rather naturally. It wasn't like A Bronx Tale with Robert DeNiro where there's a drawn out chase for like half the film just to talk to the girl, and long family talks about black women and whether to date them or not. North African and Indian men approach black woman a lot all over the world and they'd do it more if it weren't for society. Another cute scene was how the ending unfolded. Marwan is pressured from his end, while Mavela is shown being pressured from her end. I never even thought of Romeo and Juliet while watching; so I didn't know how the movie would end so it's not that obvious. How these scenes came to be was steadily and kind of excitingly approached, but with a heavy sense of hovering doom due to a preceding hodgepodge of nonstop horrible events like rapes and thefts and drugs and fights. I didn't know it would be like that, I think me crying at the end was simply me coming out of shock that the prior 85 minutes had put me through. It's damn near a horror film. Well I'll certainly be Googling "Brussels youth crime" later, won't I? Another thing this film taught me based on its use of French and Dutch was the meaning of "migrant." Apparently you can gain citizenship in one European country and once you do, quite easily migrate to another and perhaps settle there. I did not know that, so perhaps anti-migration isn't just anti-Muslim and anti-European- lower class, but also anti-black...How rude. Anyway nice looking film (it's like a loooong rap music video), HORRIBLE story about the WORST type of life, but nicely connected. Good acting, rap music so if you don't like it oh well, can't help you. Lots of rape, blatant sex scenes, bullets, tears, blood, drastically stupid decisions, montages of dangerous nightlife, perilous citylife...it's one big bloody queef of a movie. But it's not...boring. The lead actor, Aboubakr, is beautiful, charismatic and SEXY. He makes me want to go ALL the way to Brussels LOL! If it weren't for him I'll be honest..I would've abandoned during the opening credits. Would I watch again, hell no. Will I think about this film (and Aboubakr) for weeks to come. Oh yes.

A 15-year-old girl in a black gang in Brussels must choose between loyalty and love when she falls for a Moroccan boy from a rival gang. The city of Brussels, plagued by high rates of youth unemployment, is home to nearly forty street gangs, and the number of young people drawn into the city's gang culture increases each year. It's in this criminal milieu that directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah set Black, a pulse-pounding contemporary take on a Shakespearean tragedy. Worlds collide when Mavela (Martha Canga Antonio), a teenage girl with ties to Brussels' Black Bronx gang, meets Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi), a member of a rival Moroccan gang, at a police station. Keenly aware of the consequences of getting involved with someone from another gang, they at first resist their attraction to one another, but they can only resist for so long.

Adil El Arbi seems hell-bent on putting migrants into bad daylight, or one would hope...because if this was a factual portrayal of these people we would be right to want them gone as soon as possible. As far as the story goes Adil just took the Romeo & Juliet template and changed some characters names, ethnicities and locations and voila, the script almost wrote itself. Really, this drains the film of almost any surprises coz we all know how that story went. That's just being lazy Adil... As a plus, I do have to say the movie is well shot. The camera-work and cinematography is pretty good. The music as you might have guessed is horrible, atrocious rap music, that's what the gangsta boys listen to innit. But we all know that this is the lowest form of music after Flemish Butcher songs right? So turn the sound off or watch with earplugs. And now for the biggest problem of the whole movie: the characters. These are the biggest bunch of violent, stealing, raping a-holes you would never want to associate with, live in the neighborhood off or even encounter in your lifetime. Normally you as a watcher should be able to sympathize with or at least root for the protagonists but this film makes that very difficult. The black girl is about the only one you can feel for but the rest of these mothers could not die fast enough for me. Just as in 'IMAGE' these migrant characters have nothing but contempt for each other (Blacks vs Moroccans) but most of all for the working class Flemish people. We seems to be the bottom of the barrel for them. That nukes all hope that integrating these people in our society will ever have a chance, or that is what this film is shouting to us in capital letters. Adding insult to injury: this film is financed partially by the VAF, but the only Flemish words spoken in this flick are curse words like 'klootzak', 'makkak', 'hoer', etc...money well spent VAF... So if you want to get royally p*ssed off watch this movie, if you want a couple of hours of solid entertainment watch Deadpool.

'Yes, I read books by Shakespeare', says a young gang member jokingly when he is interrogated by the police. Without doubt, this scene in 'Black' is meant as a little innuendo. The film is the latest cinematographic adaptation of Shakespeare's play 'Romeo and Juliet'.'Black' is set in Brussels, where territories are divided between Moroccan street gangs and rival gangs of black Africans. When Moroccan teenager Marwan is waiting in the police station after having been arrested for theft, he meets the pretty African girl Mavela, who is caught for the same reason. They exchange telephone numbers, and start an affair. Because they are members of different gangs, this is enough reason for an exchange of violent attacks by the gangs. Several girls are gang raped or forced to participate in holdups, the boys organize gang fights.The film is very fast-paced and dynamic, capturing the inner city gang life with dark, sinister images and impressive establishing shots, making Brussels look like an urban jungle not much different from the Bronx or Compton.But beneath this succession of beautiful shots, there is not much substance. The screenplay doesn't contain much suspense because everyone knows the Romeo and Juliet storyline. The dialogue consists mostly of four letter words. The characters are mostly one-dimensional. All white cops are sadistic racists, all black men are heartless macho's, all girls are sexy and submissive. The film makers miss the opportunity to develop interesting characters, like Mina, a policewoman of Moroccan descent. We never learn how she copes with being hated by members of her own ethnic group.In view of the Paris attacks of November 13th, the film has an interesting extra dimension. The Moroccan street gang is named '1080', which is the zip code for Molenbeek, the quarter in Brussels where the atrocities were being prepared and planned. You can't help but think that Marwan could just as well have been one of the attackers.Another interesting thing are the subtle references to Belgian linguistic squabbles. From time to time, Marwan and Mavela switch from French to Dutch, but purely in a mocking way. They hate the Flemish policemen who address them in Dutch, and when Marwan tells his imprisoned brother that he wants to start a legitimate garage business, he is accused of being 'Flemish'. Knowing that both directors are from Flanders, this is a nice pun.