Summary
- The Gravity is a captivating and unnerving sci-fi crime thriller that demands your attention. Aesthetically stunning, this French-language movie has one of the wildest and best final acts we’ve seen this year.
- The film’s well-crafted screenplay creates multidimensional protagonists that we instantly root for, driving the narrative forward.
- While The Gravity attempts to tackle interesting themes such as brotherhood and poverty, it never fully engages with them, and the secondary characters and relationships are underdeveloped, leading to missed potential.
The French sci-fi crime thriller The Gravity, not to be confused with the 2013 Alfonso Cuarón sci-fi flick starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is a captivating and unnerving thriller that demands your attention. The stunning cinematography and the film’s anxiety-inducing score create an eerie atmosphere, forcing audiences to anticipate an imminent threat. Its story is simple, but it’s the characters and their arcs that drive the narrative. Writers Cédric Ido, Melisa Godet, and Jeanne Apkeman’s well-crafted screenplay creates multidimensional protagonists we instantly root for.
However, where The Gravity falls flat is its themes and secondary relationships. The Gravity tackles some interesting ideas, such as brotherhood, loyalty, and poverty, and intends to make meaningful points about these things, yet the film never engages with these concepts enough to make them effective. Similarly, while the three main protagonists and their relationships are highlights of the film, the secondary characters and their relationships with the three leads are very thin, leading to an uneven picture with a lot more potential.
Making its debut at TIFF 2023, The Gravity follows Daniel (Max Gomis), a professional sprinter training for his comeback, and Joshua (Steve Tientcheu), Daniel’s wheelchair-bound drug-dealer brother. With dreams of leaving his small Parisian neighborhood, the return of his old friend, Christophe (Jean-Baptiste Anoumon), stirs up trouble with a young gang selling a new prosthetic drug when he attempts to take down their operations. As Christophe digs deeper into the rival gang and their mysterious new drug, he soon uncovers dark motives that put his life and everyone around him in danger.
The Gravity Tackles Multiple Genres
The Gravity
Release Date November 10, 2023
Rating R
Runtime 85 min
Genres Sci-Fi, Crime, International
The Gravity can’t really be defined by just one genre. Writer/director Cédric Ido seamlessly creates a film with plenty of appeal, drawing from a variety of styles and sources. Scattered throughout the film, audiences will be treated to hints of sci-fi, thriller, crime, action, and horror genres.
In the form of a secondary plot, The Gravity’s story takes place when the planets in our solar system realign around Earth’s orbit, which is supposed to have devastating impacts. While the film does deal with planet-ending sci-fi elements, it’s the crime and thriller foundations of the film that keep The Gravity grounded and connected to its characters.
Related: 20 Movies That Blend Multiple Genres to Create Something Beautiful
Fascinating Protagonists and Outstanding Performances
Dark Star Pictures
As previously mentioned, the film’s three main protagonists are fascinating. Daniel has a fear of moving on, despite his aspirations to leave the neighborhood he’s spent his whole life in. Joshua has a need to cope on his own without the constant support of Daniel. Christophe has an ego problem, and yearns for vengeance against the young drug dealers who stole his turf and his customers. Seeing each character battle their own demons leads to satisfying arcs, sometimes brought to life in visually clever if over-the-top ways (such as Daniel sprinting from an earthquake away from his neighborhood in a manifestation of his internal conflict over moving on).
While Christophe’s arc isn’t as layered as Daniel or Joshua’s, his investigation into the drug dealing gang is still captivating to watch. Christophe stalks the hallways of the neighborhood towers, searching for clues and drawing anything he sees, with great detail may we add. He asks his old customer for help, leading him to many of the gang’s prolific leaders. Daniel and Joshua have far more dramatic and emotional narratives, whereas Christophe’s is actually kind of comedic, alleviating much of the films’ tension and drama.
The three actors all give enthralling performances as their respective characters. Max Groomis delves into Daniel’s trauma and fear with his raw, multi-layered performance. Steve Tientcheu plays his character, Joshua, with such stern conviction and confidence, never allowing his emotional side to seep through the boundaries of his character’s fortified soul. Although Joshua may be seen as a grumpy character by outsiders, always judging others’ and letting his opinions be known, Tientcheu manages to delve into his character’s hidden vulnerabilities through subtle expressions. Jean-Baptiste Anoumon’s performance as Christophe, however, is easily the most entertaining. The actor enriches his character with charm, pain, and intelligence, and even delves into his comedic side a bit as well, creating a character audiences will instantly fall in love with.
A Wild Final Act
Dark Star Pictures
Leaning fully into the multiple genres that the film previously teased, The Gravity’s final act is relentless. After Daniel, Joshua, and Christophe get kidnapped by 14-year-old drug dealers for sacrificial means, an epic, over-the-top brawl ensues. Thankfully, Joshua has his wheelchair, which he turned into a multi-faceted killing machine throughout the movie, leading to a jaw-dropping scene. Joshua’s wheelchair also deploys weapons for Daniel, allowing him to go ham on these 14-year-old abductors as well. And did we mention that this was all happening during a world-shattering earthquake caused by the realignment of planets around Earth’s orbit?
Audiences will be left puzzled, elated, and extremely satisfied by the film’s wild ending. Blending in themes of sci-fi, action, and a small hint of horror, The Gravity’s final act is a mesmerizing way to end this otherwise grounded flick. The action is brutal and well-shot, with a memorable long take seeing Daniel wipe out a hallway of 14-year-old cultists. Likewise, with the imminent threat of the earthquake and the mass number of cultists, The Gravity’s final act has a ton of stakes, elevating the thrill and tension of this gnarly finale. It’s truly something to behold.
Related: Best Movie Endings of All Time, Ranked
Underutilized Themes and Thin Secondary Characters
Dark Star Pictures
Where the film sadly falls flat, however, is the underutilization of its themes. The Gravity tackles compelling themes of fraternity, home, poverty, and trust, but Cédric Ido doesn’t delve into them enough to make them impactful. On paper, these ideas work, but the end result gets buried in the film’s histrionics and ultimately carry little weight.
Likewise, the side characters and relationships, bar Christophe’s former customer, are all underdeveloped. Particularly, Daniel’s relationship with his girlfriend. The Gravity never delves into their relationship; she could be his roommate, for all we know. So when we reach what should have been a seminal moment in the film, where Daniel’s girlfriend asks him to come to Canada with her, audiences don’t feel much of a pull or tension. If The Gravity had increased its 85-minute run time by about 10 minutes, maybe we could have explored their relationship and other characters a little deeper, allowing for a much more complete film.
Ultimately, it’s still a unique blast worth recommending. The Gravity is in select theaters now, and on VOD platforms November 14th. You can watch the trailer below:
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