NOVEMBER : Tuesday 30th May 2023.

I finally got around to seeing the M Rated 'NOVEMBER' earlier this week following its release in Australia on 11th May. This French crime drama thriller film is Co-Written and Directed by Cedric Jimenez whose previous feature film credits are his debut with 'Paris Under Watch' in 2012, then 'The Connection' in 2014, 'The Man with the Iron Heart' in 2017 and 'The Stronghold' in 2020. This film has garnered generally positive critical reviews and has so far grossed US$19.4M off the back of a production budget of US$16.5M.

The film opens up in Athens, Greece where a raid is carried out on an apartment building looking to apprehend the leader of a dangerous terrorist cell. Chief of the French anti-terrorism Police, Fred (Jean Dujardin) is in situ acting as an interrogator. However, the raid proves fruitless as their target escapes across the rooftops with Fred in pursuit, but his quarry eludes him. Ten months later, in Paris, France, the unimaginable happens.

On the evening of Friday 13th November a number of coordinated attacks ring out across the city. Mass-shootings and bombings from a number of assailants target innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives. Beginning at 9:15pm three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, during an international football match, after failing to gain entry to the stadium. Another group of attackers then fired on crowded cafes and restaurants in Paris, while a third group carried out another mass shooting and took hostages at a concert attended by 1,500 people in the Bataclan theatre, leading to a stand-off with Police. The attackers were either shot or blew themselves up when Police raided the theatre.

In the aftermath, it is revealed 130 people are dead, 416 are injured and countless families are left shattered. The Police have no idea who is responsible, where they are and what they plan to do next. Over the course of the next five days the SDAT (Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate) will not stop until those behind the attacks are brought to justice. Appropriately, Director Jimenez does now show the viewer the carnage that unfolded during or immediately after the attacks, but he does show us the mayhem of the aftermath as Fred, his Commanding Officer Heloise (Sandrine Kiberlain) and their entire team are brought in for a briefing and given their very explicit instructions to leave no stone unturned in the search for the perpetrators and as urgently as possible. 

And so what follows over the course of the next five days as a team of four are largely at the centre of the investigations - Fred, Heloise, Marco (Jeremie Renier) and Ines (Anais Demoustier) who is the youngest and most junior of the group. One such instance where Ines shows her inexperience is when she homes in on a suspected terrorist, Mokrani (Youssef Sahraoui) and promptly apprehends him and brings him in for questioning only to discover that he is in fact an undercover officer who had been working the case for the last three years and now his cover is likely to be blown. Fred gives Ines a right royal bollocking and sends her back to her desk dejected having told her that this was the first and last time that she messes up in this way, and to now concentrate her efforts on tip-offs received from the general public - of which there are literally hundreds. 

Fairly soon afterwards Ines receives a call from Samia (Lyna Khoudri), who's cousin Hasna (Sarah Afchain) has been staying with her in her apartment. But Hasna has been behaving oddly since the terror attacks and has been meeting with two men. The men are believed to be sleeping rough under a freeway, and Samia thinks they might have had something to do with the attacks. Ultimately Ines has to lie to Samia in order to eek out the intelligence she so desperately needs in the search for the two remaining terrorists. 

All of this culminates with Hasna and her two terrorist suspects being cornered in their apartment in Saint-Denis when truck loads of heavily armed special forces operatives arrive en masse at the apartment and begin to shoot the place up with a relentless barrage of semi-automatic gun fire, which was reported at the time as using up some five thousand rounds of ammunition. When the shooting finally subsides and after they have sent in their sniffer dog, and then a robotic camera Hasna calls out to let her leave, she's done nothing wrong only for an explosion to ring out through the apartment ripping out walls and floors as the terrorists inside detonated their suicide vests. Several special forces officers are injured in the blast. 

Following on from this Ines has to front up to Samia who has now been detained pending further investigations into her possible links with the terrorists. Needless to say Samia is distraught, and Ines is ashamed of herself for allowing Samia to be compromised in this way. When the end credits roll, we are told of the human cost of the attacks and the investigations, and that Samia now lives under a witness protection programme. 

With 'November' Director Cedric Jiminez has taken the facts of the November 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, and fictionalised them into a fast paced effective Police procedural film, that sacrifices any hint of back story of the four main protagonists here for a down and dirty account of the nuts and bolts of what it took to hunt down and dispense with the terrorists in the five days immediately following the attacks. And on that level the film succeeds delivering a frenetic thrill ride that will have you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

'November' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-