MicMacs

AKA Mic Macs a Tire-Larigot

Hopscotch

R4 DVD

French with English subtitles

Mic Macs is a quirky French comedy with a really dark side. It deals with the international armaments industry and its effects on innocent people. Young Bazil is one such. His father was killed in Algeria by a land mine he was defusing and Bazil himself has a bullet in his brain from a driveby shooting in which he was the “innocent bystander”. On his discharge from hospital he finds he has lost his job, all his belongings and any hope of a normal future because the bullet in his head is a constant risk to his life.

He is living rough on the streets and meets Slammer, an ex-criminal who was saved from execution and pardoned when the guillotine stuck. Slammer introduces Bazil to his friends, a motley group who live in a junkyard and survive by recycling and repairing the waste they scavenge. Bazil is accepted by the group and fits right in.

One day as they are out scavenging he passes the headquarters of the two big arms companies who made the land mine and the bullet. He slips into the shareholders’ meeting of one company and finds the Chairman is not only proud of the dreadful weapons he makes but makes a joke of the collateral damage they cause. Bazil decides on revenge and with the help of his new friends he comes up with a complex plan that involves turning the companies against each other.

With the help of his friends’ special talents he can put his plan into effect. There is Calculator, a lady whose special talent is mathematics and statistics, Pete who can craft automatons and other beautiful pieces of machinery from junk, Buster the human cannonball and Elastic Girl, whose contortionist abilities are almost unbelievable.

Their plot, of course, often goes wrong but with Slammer’s planning there is always a Plan B.

Although the film has many funny moments that help to moderate the violence Mic Macs is still a grim movie. It is subtle in a way that U.S. filmmakers can rarely achieve. Although the heroes are rejects we come to see them after a while as normal people with normal ambitions, as well as a certain animal cunning resulting from their position at the bottom of society. Their loyalty to one another is what makes the plan succeed in the end.

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