Moussa Maaskri Movies

Nursing student and expectant father Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) enters into a frantic race against time to save his pregnant wife from kidnappers in this taut suspense thriller from the writers and directors of the hit 2007 nail-biter Pour Elle (which was remade in the U.S. as The Next Three Days). His wife abducted as he watches helplessly, Samuel receives a phone call stating he has three hours to reach a local hospital and free a man under police protection. As the clock starts to tick, Samuel rushes to complete his mission and save his family. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A lawman infiltrates Paris's criminal underground to bring a gang of killers to justice in this violent thriller. Abel Vargas (Gerald Laroche) is a powerful crime boss who is serving time in prison, and as he's being transferred from one penitentiary to another, his police escort is met by a large band of Vargas's underlings, who attack them with furious violence. When the dust settles, Vargas is a fugitive and a large number of officers are dead. Police detective Vincent Drieu (Richard Berry) is put in charge of the investigation to find Vargas and his henchmen, and after losing patience with his fellow gumshoes, Drieu begins working undercover, hoping to find Vargas's associates by passing as a fellow member of the criminal fraternity. In time Drieu finds a pair of cops who understand his style and working methods, Kathia (Aissa Maiga) and Wazemme (Bernard Blancan), and together they dig deep into the French underground, courting danger as they become friends with the people they intend to put behind bars. Les Insoumis (aka Crossfire) was the first theatrical feature from director Claude Michel Rome, who previously distinguished himself in European television. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Like The Bear, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's acclaimed animal picture released 15 years prior, Two Brothers offers a family-friendly epic as told through the eyes of its four-legged protagonists, who, in this case, are sibling tiger cubs Koumal and Sangha. Though a life in the jungles of French colonial Indochina circa the 1920s seemed certain, the cubs are separated shortly after their birth when the notorious hunter Aidan McRory (Guy Pearce) kills their father. Koumal is whisked away to a circus, where he is cruelly beaten into submission and forced to perform tricks to earn his keep. Sangha fares better at first -- he lands in the posh estate of a French government official who wants the big cat to serve as a companion for his lonely son, though a series of unforeseen circumstances ultimately finds Sangha in the hands of a man determined to turn him into an aggressive prizefighter. Understandably, neither tiger is happy with his arrangements, and both escape captivity in hopes of returning to the jungle. Unfortunately for them, the prospect of two loose tigers is hardly comforting for the locals, who quickly demand that McRory kill the cubs before they threaten the safety of the village. Once McRory finds the tigers in their natural habitat, however, he faces a crisis of conscience he hadn't thought possible. Two Brothers also features Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Freddie Highmore. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Vidocq (1775-1857) was a noted French detective who was one of the great trailblazers of modern criminal investigation; he's been credited with establishing the first private investigation firm, and pioneered a number of scientific techniques that are still being used today. Vidocq was also a master of disguise and a former thief with no small sense of adventure, and his exploits have been fodder for a number of novels, plays, and motion pictures in France; Vidocq is a high-tech retooling of his legend that employs cutting-edge digital technology to bring a new visual dazzle to his story. Vidocq (Gerard Depardieu) dies an unexpected death while battling his arch-nemesis the Alchemist, and Boisset (Guillaume Canet), an opportunistic journalist, sets out to write his life story, convincing Nimier (Moussa Maaskri), Vidocq's partner, that he had made arrangements with the great man himself to collaborate on such a book before his death. Boisset begins interviewing Vidocq's cohorts, but it seems someone is following the reporter, as his interview subjects have a habit of dying sudden and violent deaths shortly after sharing their stories. As it turns out, the deaths are tied into a case Vidocq investigated, in which a number of people were killed by lightning -- lightning that was conjured up by none other than the Alchemist. Shot on high-definition digital video equipment to allow special effects artists greater latitude to manipulate the images, Vidocq also features Ines Sastre, Andre Dussollier, and Edith Scob. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This French prison drama focuses on a penitentiary inmate known as the Mute (Olivier Martinez), who either cannot or will not speak, even though he can apparently hear well enough. When the Mute's cellmate escapes, both the Warden (Bernard Le Coq) and the Chief Guard (Claude Brasseur) try to get him to tell what he knows about the disappearance -- the Guard through violence, the Warden by transferring him to a new cell with four other prisoners and cutting off TV privileges to the inmates until the Mute spills the beans. One of the Mute's new roommates is a white collar criminal (Said Taghmaoui) who has just landed in prison and is not dealing well with the pressures of life behind bars, but his skills with computers make him a very usefully ally among the prisoners. Meanwhile, Flic (Gilbert Melki), a self-important police detective, is investigating the escape of the Mute's cellmate and is not happy with the low level of cooperation among the prison's population. La Taule received its North American premiere at Montreal's World Film Festival in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi