Racer and the Jailbird

Name: Racer and the Jailbird
Genre: Drama, Crime
Released: May 4, 2018
Duration: 130 min
Rating: 50
Cast: Ad, Corentin Lobet, Eric De Staercke, Fabien Magry, Gaël Maleux

2018

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Mixed or average reviews based on 17 Critics

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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6.5

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Racer And The Jailbird

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Movie Details & Credits

Not Rated

Kinepolis Film Distribution (KFD) | Release Date: May 4, 2018

Starring: Ad, Corentin Lobet, Eric De Staercke, Fabien Magry, Gaël Maleux, Guray Nalbant, Igor van Dessel, Jean-Benoît Ugeux, Kerem Can, Matthias Schoenaerts, Nabil Missoumi, Nathalie Van Tongelen, Sam Louwyck, Stefaan Degand, Thomas Coumans

Summary: As a member of a notorious Brussels gang renowned for their expertly-executed robberies, Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts) tends to his front, a luxury automobile import-export business, in his downtime. Sparks fly when he meets glamorous and affluent race car driver Bibi (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and despite their wildly different backgrounds, theAs a member of a notorious Brussels gang renowned for their expertly-executed robberies, Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts) tends to his front, a luxury automobile import-export business, in his downtime. Sparks fly when he meets glamorous and affluent race car driver Bibi (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and despite their wildly different backgrounds, the pair fall instantly and tragically in love. While Gigi attempts to break away from his illicit history, two things stand in the couple’s way to a happy life together: an unrelenting mob hungry for another heist, and the cops that are closing in on them.… Expand

Director: Michael R. Roskam

Genre(s): Drama, Crime

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 130 min

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Critic Reviews

The Playlist - Jessica Kiang

May 2, 2018

One of the most undersung and most potent pleasures of genre cinema is the excuse it has given us, time and again, to watch attractive people fall in love with each other, and if you’re in a romantic frame of mind, Racer and the Jailbird delivers so wholly on that front that it goes a fair way toward compensating for the film’s deficiencies elsewhere. Read full review

Los Angeles Times - Noel Murray

May 2, 2018

Racer and the Jailbird remains absorbing throughout, thanks primarily to the two leads, who are both almost frighteningly believable as lovers willing to risk everything to stay together. Read full review

Variety - Owen Gleiberman

May 2, 2018

The whole thing becomes drenched in a kind of downbeat sentimental martyrdom that feels oppressively old-fashioned and moribund. Read full review

IndieWire - Eric Kohn

May 2, 2018

Racer and the Jailbird speeds along at an engaging clip, but never overcomes the fundamental simplicity of its plot. Read full review

Austin Chronicle - Josh Kupecki

May 9, 2018

While the story starts fast and furious, it sputters in its second half, not so much running out of gas as just turning into a completely different film which becomes increasingly more convoluted as it becomes less engaging. Read full review

The New York Times - Jeannette Catsoulis

May 3, 2018

The two leads are sensational, but the movie, drained of its life force and stuffed with confusing plot complications — like a shoehorned-in undercover agent and some mysterious Albanians — never recovers. Read full review

The Film Stage - Mike Mazzanti

May 10, 2018

A gripping highway heist sequence and two affecting lead performances are surrounded by a film that mistakes the knowledge of sadness for its authentication. Read full review

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Bertaut1

Aug 12, 2018

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Le Fidèle [lit. trans. The Faithful] is an absolute mess of a film, and one of the most egregious examples I've ever encountered of a narrative systematically undermining and imploding in on top of itself, unable to bear the weight of a litany of clichés, melodrama, and inexplicable decisions (on the part of both the filmmakers and the characters). The incongruity between the first 90 or so minutes of Fidèle and the last half-hour is truly bizarre, as the script inexplicably morphs from a heist movie into a pseudo disease-of-the-week based tearjerker.

For the first 90 minutes or so, Fidèle chugs along nicely – a little overwrought, and nothing special, but well put together and enjoyable enough in a disposable sort of way. It's a fairly familiar story; essentially, will the love of a good woman save the recidivist criminal with a heart of gold? Gino "Gigi" Vanoirbeek (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a thief masquerading as a car salesman (the "jailbird" of the horrendous English language title which I point-blank refuse to use), Bénédicte "Bibi" Delhany (Adèle Exarchopoulos) works for her father's (Eric De Staercke) construction company but spends her free time on the race track (the "racer"). They are introduced by her brother (Thomas Coumans), who doesn't know what Gigi really does, and they quickly fall in love. However, as time goes by, Gigi finds it increasingly difficult to keep the truth of what he does away from a suspicious Bibi. After a successful bank robbery, Gigi is persuaded by his colleagues to do "one more heist" (yep, that old chestnut), despite the "risk versus reward" (to quote Heat) scenario it seems to be.

This plot summary takes us through the first act (which focuses on Gigi), and into the second (which focuses on Bibi). And then the bottom falls out, as the screenplay makes one of the most bizarre about-turns I've ever seen. The one element of Rundskop which needed work was that writer/director Michael R. Roskam introduced several plot strands which just didn't integrate into the surrounding narrative, almost as if they were from an entirely different film. I'm thinking of the comic-relief mechanics, the tough-as-nails workaholic cop, or the homosexual undercover cop. These elements were fine in isolation, but just didn't settle into the overriding narrative. Now, think of that lack of integration, and then multiply it by several thousand, and you will be some way to understanding just how badly the last half hour of Fidèle gels with everything that has preceded it.

But it's not only the fact that the film has an identity crisis and morphs into something completely different. One might forgive that if that something different was well written. As a heist movie, Fidèle works pretty well, but as a tearjerker, it's horrendous. For starters, Roskam tries to cram far too much into a short space of time. The last half hour of the film jumps all over the place from Bibi's dad being blackmailed to Gigi's recidivism catching up with him to trouble conceiving a child to ovarian cancer to chemotherapy to mysterious Albanians to a dog fighting ring. And with Bibi on the brink of death, when Gigi arrives in the hospital to see her, she's already slipped into a coma. So they never get to say goodbye. Then he gets beaten up. Twice.

Roskam handles all of this with a spectacularly misguided solemnity that ends up manifesting itself as nothing other than mawkishness. He just keeps on piling melodrama on top of cliché on top of angst. It just never ends, and, most unforgivingly, the suffering has absolutely no cathartic effect whatsoever, it just exists in a vacuum of its own making; there's no moral component, no sense in which any of the characters come out the other side having learnt something, and the audience itself certainly doesn't experience any kind of emotional purification, any sense in which their pity or fear has been engaged or purged.

And what's especially frustrating is that the film's individual components are well put together. The acting is strong (it would be almost unwatchable where the acting anything less than exemplary), and Roskam's direction is predictably solid. Hell, even the end of the film, the final sequence as Gigi drives across the city, is brilliantly shot, and the revelation that his and Bibi's conversation continued after he joked that he was a bank robber really caught me by surprise. It's for reasons like this that I haven't scored the film two or three.

However, although the destination is pretty satisfying, how we have gotten there is so ludicrous that it renders any sense of accomplishment completely null and void. It's just a shame, because although in an isolated sense, most of the film is well done, the totality is a disaster.

5/10… Expand

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