The World Is Yours

The lengths one man will go to in order to secure the exclu­sive rights to sell Mis­ter Freeze ice pops to the over­heat­ed denizens of north African is the dri­ving force behind this chirpy gang­ster com­e­dy from French pro­mo man, Romain Gavras. It’s a film which skirts a fine line between depict­ing the inher­ent dan­gers of enter­ing into the hard-bit­ten world of gang­ster­ism, while also mock­ing the pet­ti­ness and stu­pid­i­ty of many of its key archetypes.

François (Karim Lek­lou) is a push-around guy, a lov­able prank mon­key who embraces the idea of legit­i­ma­cy but does’t quite have the intel­lec­tu­al wiles to suc­ceed on those terms. In order to drum up some seed cap­i­tal for his ice pop dreams, he agrees to over­see a drug deal in a slick Span­ish beach resort, con­vinced by mani­ac mob­ster Pou­tine (Sofi­an Khammes) that the whole thing will be an absolute cake­walk, a mod­el of sedate pro­fes­sion­al­ism and seri­ous­ness. And he’s very wrong about that. Fist fights, pub­lic humil­i­a­tion, sly bar­gain­ing and a bun­gled kid­nap are all part of this sup­pos­ed­ly sim­ple plan.

Though the film recalls the sun-bleached Florid­i­an envi­rons of Bri­an De Palma’s cult clas­sic Scar­face (of which the title is a direct ref­er­ence), this per­haps has more in com­mon with the mock­ney wide­boy capers made by Guy Ritchie before he was sub­sumed as a fran­chise jour­ney­man for the studios.

While the per­sis­tent­ly naffed-off François doesn’t make for the most endear­ing cen­tral char­ac­ter, Gavras is gen­er­ous when it comes to fill­ing out the film with eccen­tric bit-parters and all bring their own com­bustible ener­gy to the brew. There’s one scene in which a pair of diminu­tive French hench­men – both with their eyes on secret­ly top­pling the boss and tak­ing over the rack­ets – pull up their car while one films the oth­er throw­ing punch­es at a group of bemused Eng­lish tourists which is very fun­ny in its total randomness.

The real trea­sure, though, is the return of the great Isabelle Adjani, who rel­ish­es the role of François’ annoy­ing­ly inter­ven­tion­ist moth­er, Dan­ny. With none of the airs and graces of your typ­i­cal French grande dame, she still man­ages to steal every scene in which she appears. She lives in a dingy apart­ment block, but presents her­self to the world as if she’s mar­ried to a Sau­di prince.

Just the strange jux­ta­po­si­tion of this mob mama con­sort­ing with dim-wit­ted hoods while kit­ted out in flam­boy­ant haute cou­ture would have been enough, but she brings a phys­i­cal com­ic fire and care­worn human­i­ty to this moth­er who just wants to pre­vent her son from fail­ing with­out hav­ing to tell him he’s a born fuck-up.

It’s fun, light and maybe a lit­tle emp­ty, but the film is pow­ered by some enjoy­ably daft car­i­ca­tures and ends up say­ing that even when does pay, there are unseen costs a‑plenty when the cash does final­ly roll in.