In The Atlantic’s April 2015 issue, the cover story by Jeffery Goldberg asks, “Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” the author discusses how the influx population of Muslims to France is largely sequestered to the suburbs, where they are unemployed in huge numbers, and this, among other things, is causing discontent. Goldberg somehow attributes this Muslim discontent to rising French anti-Semitism, saying Muslims are its “chief propagators.”
With such a dialogue in the open, Alexandre Arcady’s film 24 Days should seem like a particularly important film. It is based on the real life tragedy of Ilan Halimi (Syrus Shahidi) a young Jewish cell phone salesman that was kidnapped at the hands of African and North African immigrants later known as the “Gang of Barbarians.” But Arcady barely even brazes the issue of religion or race, he chooses not to engage in such controversy and only briefly mentions it in the end. Instead the bad guy is Youssouf Fofana (Tony Harrisson), a paint by the numbers movie villain who wants lots of money.
The film begins with aura of suspense and we see how a beautiful woman lures Ilan into a trap. After he is kidnapped his abductors contact his girlfriend, and then his dad (Pascal Elbé). His dad tries to follows police instructions but soon becomes frustrated, mostly because his ex-wife (Zabou Breitman), Ilan’s mother, continually screams at him. Ilan is treated horribly by his captors, yet we still believe that at any moment he will be released. In this way the plot is rather exciting, and the film flows nicely from scene to scene, but the major downside is how inefficient the ensemble seems overall, or perhaps how misdirected they were. For example, Ilan’s sisters are always either talking or screaming—there is no middle ground. His mother only argues, cries or yells. The policemen investigating the kidnapping seem to only have a single facial expression each, and deliver their lines monotonously. So while politics and religion are not necessary for a thriller to succeed, good acting is. The fact that the film is based on real-life events, is sadly its strongest, and perhaps only, asset.
