A scene from "Exit 67"
An achingly sincere gangster movie set in St. Michel, a multi-ethnic Montreal neighbourhood, Exit 67 is the story of a Haitian-Canadian who grows up hating his white father for killing his black mom.
Anger stains Jecko's existence: "Winter strips autumn of its colourful vegetation and leaves behind the carcasses of trees," the narrator tells us early on. "I hate my life. My life is the winter."
That remark would seem a tribute to Quebec folk hero Gilles Vigneault's famous nationalist cry, Mon Pays, which began " Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver" (my country is not a country, it's winter). And sure enough, writer-director Jephté Bastien stops at several points in the film, allowing characters to explain how drugs, unemployment and the breakdown of the traditional family have devastated his country - the local Haitian community.
Exit 67 (a highway out of Montreal) is a serious, well-intentioned work; one made with obvious care and deliberation. Bastien dedicates the film to a 16-year-old cousin who died in a 2007 Montreal gangland slaying. Working with a limited budget, the filmmaker has created a distinctive style out of necessity, shooting scenes in unlit cribs and clubs, giving his movie a dramatic chiaroscuro look.
The film's evident craft and ambition has been rewarded. Last year, Exit 67 won the Claude Jutra award, a prize honouring outstanding achievement by a first-time Quebec feature filmmaker.
And while we have much to admire here, there is no way around it: Exit 67 is a thumpingly dull, pulp-free meditation on gangsta movies that comes with way too much earnest, self-conscious chatter.
Bastien has concocted a traditional crime-movie plot - a kid from an abusive family falls in with a gang led by the charismatic older gangster Brooklyn (Benz Antoine). There are Bloods and Crips pointing guns at each other's heads. There are good and bad angels in play: Jeko (Henri Pardo) lives with a sympathetic saint, Sonia (Jacquy Bidjeck), who sees the good in him. Then we have sweet-talking Candy (Natacha Noël), a stripper who tells Brooklyn's gang about a sweet, too-good-to-be-true payoff - $50,000 just sitting there waiting to be picked up by enterprising hustlers.
Unfortunately, what should be a fresh Québécois take on modern gangsta movies - New Jacques Swing? - feels too much like a drab sermon. Bastien never accesses the vitality that makes gangster movies work. There is not nearly enough movement here. Characters sit around talking about events that mostly happen off-screen.
And our hero simply isn't the man of action required by crime movies. Jecko is a self-pitying mope - Eeyore with a handgun.
Jephté Bastien, who also co-wrote the film's persuasive score, is obviously a conscientious citizen and a filmmaker of promise. Hopefully, the next time out, he will find a mode of expression that better accommodates both his civic obligations and artistic ambitions.
Exit 67
- Written and directed by Jephté Bastien
- Starring Henri Pardo, Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien, Edouard Fontaine, Benz Antoine and Jacquy Bidjeck
- Classification: 14A
Special to The Globe and Mail