Lupin (2021): Part 1
Overall: 6/10 - might watch it again, enjoyable, interesting, smart, well shot, character development could have been better, plot was enthralling, but perhaps not realistic.
I watched the dubbed version, so the voice acting was lost. Perhaps the characters would have felt more believable if I had watched the authentic audio, but they still would have had largely circumstantial personalities. Claire, the police commissioner, Mrs. Pellegrini, Juliette, all of their actions fitting perfectly into the elaborate plot. Sure, Assane alludes to himself as a scholar of people, but the only way this really works is that he is a master manipulator, and that does not bode well for his relationship with Claire. How does she manage to stay so warm towards him? Even in the final scene, after the danger on the train has seemingly faded, she seems incapable of being anger with him. We know Assane to be a cheater, perhaps he was playing Juilette that entire time, although we do not yet know what for. So that when he pulled his big heist, he could ask her face to face about the necklace’s history, hope to get a genuine reply, and that she would keep her mouth closed about his identity? Why did she wait so long to tell her father? Obviously, it wasn’t long enough to keep Assane safe. What was he thinking, letting the kid out of his sight? Going somewhere so unfamiliar when he was in such danger?
Either way, the plot was smart, well done. Sure, there were plot holes: wikipedia isn’t that easy to edit, social media isn’t that easy to fake. Perhaps he spent more time then they really let on. The faked suicide is such a bad trope. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if there’s no pulse and your not breathing, then you’re dead or dying. There is no magic pills you can take that temporarily create this effect and then wake up later perfectly healthy. The second you stop breathing, you begin to lose brain cells. Any medical professional worth a fuck can tell whether a person is dead or just really passed out.
Then there’s the bit where no one can recognize him. Maybe he is a master of disguise, but it also seems to hint towards the racism of Parisians: that they think that all black people look the same. I have really poor facial recognition skills, so it seems possible to me that he could go unrecognized, but then you think about any real world crime where they take a blurry surveillance video and use that to create wanted photos. People see those photos on TV or where ever and call in and that leads to conviction, like, all the time. Now they can even use that image to scan live surveillance footage around cities. Although, I have heard that technology is less effective on black faces, because of AI/tech bias. What if they had made this movie about a black woman? Because with hair, make-up, eyelashes, larger normalized style range, the opportunity for disguise becomes even bigger. But I suppose the best disguise hides you in plain sight, like only a black masc immigrant can. Woman draw so much attention.
My biggest complaint is the ending, or the lack of an ending. Just a cliff hanger. No questions were answered, no positive events happened for Assane. Why didn’t he just post the full video on twitter instead of doing that dumb risky thing with the TV station? Why did he think that would work? Why didn’t he know he was in danger? I mean, his journalist friend was obviously killed. I swear to god if he ends up arrested and the cops are the heros, then I’m changing my rating to a 4/10. I don’t care about the justice system, especially one that I know is flawed against people like him. I want to see real justice, something we don’t often see in the real world because of how flawed the justice system is. If after all these plot holes, Assane still goes to jail, yeah know, to give the series a “realistic ending,” I will be pissed.
Both the translated and dubbed dialogue seemed kind of unnatural, but it didn’t take too much away from the overall effect. The shots were beautiful, the actors were good. Omar Sy was great. I love a good heist movie, and this was just that. A French Sherlock Holmes.