The Worst Ones (2022) User Reviews

A naturalistic look at living in a ghetto.

[bohdanascheinostova · 8/10 · 23 May 2023]

"The Worst Ones" presents a realistic view on living in a though, poor and sometimes also violent suburbian neighbourhood. On the other hand, the film also finds beauty in this grim and harsh environment in the character of the film-director, who is fascinated by this world and tries to convince viewers (I dare to say quite successfully) to be fascinated as well. The depiction of struggling children and teenagers feels truly believable and authentic. It's naturalistic approach is gripping and the performances by the child and teenage actors are absolutely breathtaking. "The Worst Ones" is a hidden gem in the contemporary French cinema.

When everything works out perfectly

[moamed_messi10 · 10/10 · 8 December 2022]

It was one of few times I cried at the theaters.

I think it's a personal preference but i like that non american school in cinema which we don't have to get obsessed with telling stories and build around it a whole universe to reach a satisfying end.

This movie nailed it when it comes to previewing people life's, emotions and captures it in realistic way without exaggeration or over acting to produce some stupid iconic lines, you can experience aggression, abandonment, and rejection when seeing this movie characters walk through this chapter of their lifes.

Also the movie had it's unique way to punch you in the head and make feel sth every time you might feel it's gonna get steady.

It's a different experience and this is how cinema should be in the next years.

I want to also mark the actors great efforts but I'm sorry to say this, the directors are the stars of this film.

Don't Believe the Hype

[brentsbulletinboard · 4/10 · 24 May 2023]

At the risk of sounding snarky, the title of this debut feature from writer-directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret could be interpreted in multiple (and unflattering) ways. Suffice it to say, however, this documentary-style drama about a filmmaker seeking to cast his production with nonprofessional actors from a low-income neighborhood (i.e., ghetto) in suburban northern France presents a haphazard mélange of story threads that seem more meandering than insightful or enlightening. The four protagonists who are selected for this fictional work become disapprovingly known as "the worst ones" for supposedly having the most notorious reputations in the neighborhood (though, when honestly compared to many of their contemporaries, they don't come across as significantly different from the rest of the locals). While this offering seems to be attempting to convey how their everyday existence mirrors that of the characters they're portraying, that goal is never clearly delineated nor effectively achieved, making viewers wonder what's really going on in their off-screen lives (not to mention in the parts they've taken on in a story that seems to make little sense). To cloud matters further, in an attempt to show (rather than tell about) what the lives of these youthful actors are like, the picture genuinely feels more improvised than structured. What's more, claims that this film offers a gritty, groundbreaking look into the challenge-filled lives of the economically underprivileged are vastly overstated, given that this territory has already been covered (and better) numerous times before in such other French releases as "Girlhood" (2014), "Dheepan" (2015), "Les Misérables" (2019) and "Gagarine" (2020), not to mention in an array of releases from many other countries. This is all compounded by the fact that much of the narrative is tedious, unfocused, imbalanced, boring and even silly at times. Indeed, how this release managed to capture the 2022 Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard Award genuinely escapes me. The underlying aim behind this picture may have arguably been a noble one, but its poorly planned execution and jumbled final cut fail to make that apparent, undoing whatever good might have been intended. Skip this one.