That man is Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), and we immediately understand him to be a methodical, self-contained professional. When we see Mehdi next, he’s operating a drone with eye goggles and a joystick, surreptitiously observing a group of armed thugs on plant at the tunnel entrance to a quarry site. And once we meet his crew of heisters, it’s also immediately understood how serious they are, as they orchestrate a surgical, heavily-armed assault on the criminals who were already stealing a load of gold bars from the quarry. This professionalism is in contrast to small-timer Liana (Tracy Gotoas) and her gang, which includes girlfriend Shainez (Sofia Lesaffre) and the fast-talking Momo (Sam Kalidi). Their racket is robbing the hotel rooms of unsuspecting men who call their sham escort service. But Liana and Shainez loot the wrong room when they make off with a drug mule’s duffel bag full of cocaine. Saber (Salim Kechiouche), a ruthless dealer who’s hungry for expansion, abducts Shainez in a play to get his product back. And that might have worked, if not for Mehdi, who turns out to be the young woman’s uncle. It’ll take all of his precise craft as a thief and a lot more violence than he’d like if Mehdi’s going to free Shainez, and to do it, he’ll enlist the aid of a new ally in the crafty, quick-thinking Liana.
Ganglands tells its story of criminals fighting criminals across six hourish-length episodes, all of them directed by Julien Leclercq, who co-created the series with Hamid Hlioua. And in France, Ganglands is known as Braqueuers: La Serie, since it’s a small-screen expansion of the criminal world Leclercq first explored in the 2015 film Braqueuers, which also starred Bouajila. (Braqueuers owes a considerable debt to Michael Mann’s heist classic Heat; it’s available on Netflix under its Americanized title, The Crew.) Mehdi, and the clash between his insulated world of high-level thievery and the dirtier business of family members in peril with unscrupulous drug dealers, is the element in Ganglands with the most watchability. But there’s a larger story that involves Saber’s ruffling the feathers of his crime family kingpin father in his rash efforts to expand, which pins in his cousin, the sophisticated, skilled money launderer Sofia (Nabiha Akkari) into the unwilling role of intermediary. There’s more gunplay ahead, and threatening ultimatums, and it’s already clear that survival is less than a guarantee. Everybody in Ganglands has something to lose, and they’re all playing for keeps.
GANGLANDS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A modernist home set quietly amidst a wood. A man is going for his morning run on the treadmill as sunlight pores through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The Gist: That man is Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), and we immediately understand him to be a methodical, self-contained professional. When we see Mehdi next, he’s operating a drone with eye goggles and a joystick, surreptitiously observing a group of armed thugs on plant at the tunnel entrance to a quarry site. And once we meet his crew of heisters, it’s also immediately understood how serious they are, as they orchestrate a surgical, heavily-armed assault on the criminals who were already stealing a load of gold bars from the quarry. This professionalism is in contrast to small-timer Liana (Tracy Gotoas) and her gang, which includes girlfriend Shainez (Sofia Lesaffre) and the fast-talking Momo (Sam Kalidi). Their racket is robbing the hotel rooms of unsuspecting men who call their sham escort service. But Liana and Shainez loot the wrong room when they make off with a drug mule’s duffel bag full of cocaine. Saber (Salim Kechiouche), a ruthless dealer who’s hungry for expansion, abducts Shainez in a play to get his product back. And that might have worked, if not for Mehdi, who turns out to be the young woman’s uncle. It’ll take all of his precise craft as a thief and a lot more violence than he’d like if Mehdi’s going to free Shainez, and to do it, he’ll enlist the aid of a new ally in the crafty, quick-thinking Liana.
Ganglands tells its story of criminals fighting criminals across six hourish-length episodes, all of them directed by Julien Leclercq, who co-created the series with Hamid Hlioua. And in France, Ganglands is known as Braqueuers: La Serie, since it’s a small-screen expansion of the criminal world Leclercq first explored in the 2015 film Braqueuers, which also starred Bouajila. (Braqueuers owes a considerable debt to Michael Mann’s heist classic Heat; it’s available on Netflix under its Americanized title, The Crew.) Mehdi, and the clash between his insulated world of high-level thievery and the dirtier business of family members in peril with unscrupulous drug dealers, is the element in Ganglands with the most watchability. But there’s a larger story that involves Saber’s ruffling the feathers of his crime family kingpin father in his rash efforts to expand, which pins in his cousin, the sophisticated, skilled money launderer Sofia (Nabiha Akkari) into the unwilling role of intermediary. There’s more gunplay ahead, and threatening ultimatums, and it’s already clear that survival is less than a guarantee. Everybody in Ganglands has something to lose, and they’re all playing for keeps.
\]What Shows Will It Remind You Of? AMC’s darkly ultraviolent Gangs of London comes to mind here. Regular, everyday civilians don’t seem to figure into the landscape of shows like Gangs and Ganglands — they might be in the background here or there, but city streets and the larger law-abiding world don’t rate in the world these players operate in.
Our Take: The setup of Med and Liana’s competing realities, one of them clinical in its violence and designed for the big play, the other compelling in its seat-of-the-pants, fatalistic recklessness, is the best thing Ganglands has going for it, and especially when the first episode leads to the spheres each individual operates in merging into one violent circle. In later installments, as Mehdi and Liana adjust on the fly to working together — once he grabs the boodle, she nods her head, makes a gesture; “Five dudes outside, with guns” — it’s thrilling to watch these two thieves, one a pro, one a rookie with natural talent, operate together as a a team. They’re bad people, sure, but everyone is in this universe of dark hustle. And they’re a damn sight better than the dealers and thugs they’re going up against in the effort to save Shainez.
The writing here can be a little predictable, and some characters are pretty broadly rendered in the early going. Saber, for example, for all of his would-be ruthlessness, can come off as a petulant upstart. But Bouajila is terrific as the steady, perceptive Mehdi, a man who understands violence, but also how best to apply it. And Med and Gotoas’s Liana are going to be a dynamite pair to follow on this glowering crime world adventure.
