The Right Of The Weakest review

Belgian writer-director Lucas Belvaux follows up his audacious Trilogy project with this involving if far-fetched heist movie, set in the industrially depressed Walloon town of Liège. Any hope of a future in the globalised economy looks bleak for fiftysomething ex-steel worker Robert (Claude Semal), the wheelchair-bound Jean-Pierre (Patrick Descamps) and unemployed young dad Patrick (Eric Caravaca). But then the card-playing trio befriend ex-con Marc (Belvaux himself), who takes serious interest in their plans to knock off their former workplace. Belvaux’s sympathies for his marginalised subjects are beyond doubt; the film’s at its best when observing how the characters’ lives are constrained by their environments (adroitly captured by the widescreen lensing). Shame, then, that the filmmaker goes and bungles his big rooftop finale. Jimmy Cagney he’s not…