Army of Crime

An unusual aspect of the French Resistance movement during World War II is dramatized in Robert Guédiguian's epic Army of Crime, centering on a Paris-based cell of young immigrants from various European countries, with some members Jewish but all with Communist leanings. Originally operating individually, they're brought together by a soft-spoken but determined Armenian expatriate poet and factory worker, Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), to assassinate Nazi occupiers and local collaborators. But the SS and the rightist gendarmes serving them target the group, denouncing them in a public relations campaign as Marxist criminals. Army of Crime persuasively conveys the atmosphere of submerged dread that prevailed in occupied France, while also painting a devastating portrait of the police who--terrified that the left might rise again--became the willing instruments of German oppression. While the narrative's intensity is dissipated somewhat by constant shifts among the small army of characters—Missak's relationship with his wife, Mélinée (Virginie Ledoyen), in particular, occasionally brings the film to a halt—Army of Crime deserves kudos for drawing attention to the courage of a band of resistance fighters whose exploits may be well known in France but have been largely forgotten elsewhere. Recommended. (F. Swietek)