Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
After growing up in a poor gypsy camp, Edmond Vidal, aka Momon, has retained a sense of family, unfailing loyalty and pride in his origins. Most of all, he has remained friends with Serge Suttel, with whom he first discovered prison life - for stealing cherries. The two of them inevitably got involved in organized crime. The team they formed, the Ganf Des Lyonnais, made them the most notorious armed robbers of the early 1970s. Their irresistible rise ended in 1974 with a spectacular arrest. Today, as he nears 60, Momon would like to forget that part of his life. He has found peace by retiring from the "business". He tends to his wife Janou, who suffered so in the past, and to his children and grandchildren, all of whom have great respect for this man of simple and universal values, so clear-headed and full of kindness. But then Serge Suttel, who has disowned nothing of his past, comes back into the picture.
A Gang Story is a competent French crime drama with solid performances and a genuinely felt sense of loyalty and brotherhood at its core. The dual-timeline structure works reasonably well, and the 1970s Lyon milieu is rendered with some authenticity. However, the film treads familiar gangster-redemption territory without bringing much new to the genre — the tension between old loyalties and peaceful retirement is well-worn ground. The cinematography is functional but unremarkable, and the ending, while emotionally coherent, feels somewhat predictable and deflating rather than powerfully earned. A respectable but largely conventional entry in European crime cinema.