French Resistance in 'The Army of Crime'

In 2001, a documentary titled "Terrorists in Retirement" was finally given a theatrical run here after having been suppressed by French TV.

The reason? Its unflattering portrait of the "French" Resistance, and the apparently disposable Jewish refugees who had committed much of the partisans' celebrated violence against the Nazis.

Whether Mosco Boucault's film about the so-called Manouchian Group inspired Robert Guediguian's "The Army of Crime," what we have is a feature version of the true-life story, and one that doesn't benefit very much from Guediguian's characteristically heavy hand, or the movie's inherently dubious revenge scenario. Like other war-era, wish-fulfillment movies ("Inglourious Basterds"), "The Army of Crime" suggests, however obliquely, that if only the Jews had been more intrepid, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened.

As cinema, "The Army of Crime" suffers from Guediguian's doing things too obviously, too often and too much. The love between Armenian-born poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) and his wife, Melinee (Virginie Ledoyen), is established and re-established as are the homicidal enthusiasms of the young men rallied under Manouchian, most of whom are based on real members of the Group. No emotional stone is left unturned. And each is turned again.

Like "Terrorists in Retirement," this film is an unflattering portrait of the French (and their German overlords). The idea that foreigners were defending France better than the French was not swallowed very easily by DeGaulle's forces. By the end of the film, the Nazis and their French collaborators manage to undo the Manouchian efforts and the Group itself, partly through a campaign to discredit its members over race, religion and national origin. There are certainly lessons to be learned in "The Army of Crime," but its points might have been made more succinctly, and artfully.