The Informant Review

The latest from the writer of Mesrine and A Prophet, Abdel Raouf Dafri, is a similarly thorny true-life crime tale, but in the mains of director Julien Leclercq (The Assault) it lacks those films’ thrills and charisma. The usually reliable Gilles Lellouche here fails to nail the bar owner-turned-“notifier” (aka snitch) for French customs who too-quickly paddles out of his depth. The problem is that, despite his being based on a real person, there is no sense of his motivation beyond the financial; why would he throw himself into such perilous situations? Hurried and thick with trite lines, it is a sadly cursory treatment of what could have been engrossing material.