Despite the low rating this movie has on IMDb, I decided to watch it anyway. Still, I could have not and nothing would have been bad in this. The first hour is quite distracting, following the chase-for-a-better-plan of a young black french felon going back to his roots in Senegal, only motivated by the opportunity to rob a ton of raw diamonds from a typically African bank, i.e. an easy job, without any regards for the consequences, not learning anything from the total failure of the robbery opening the movie. That's a pretty good pitch in my opinion. The only problem is the rest of the characters are totally predictable — not to say a bunch of clichés, from the Russian war criminal to the strong yet somehow charming policewoman who would turn into the perfect match for the main character. Yet, that would not be so much of a problem, for an average robbery movie, with even some Ritchie/Tarantino-like moments. The soundtrack is nice though. Yet, that's not what makes this film a failure. They tried to inject the mysteries of black Africa, animist traditions and the fight of noble animals against the vile serpent, including voodoo, sorcery and transmutation. What does that have anything to do at all with a robbery-based movie?? Where "Blueberry" succeeded, "Black" fails and barely makes it, with obvious twists, actions scenes turning flat due to the poor editing, overseen situations, and a strange turn into a wild world where characters just seem to forget their goals and accept their fate without any questions regarding logics or the reason why they got here in the first place. It's a kind of Kismet, and the viewer would finally accept the fact that this movie got straight into the wall, just like the characters with their expectations. Usually, hiring black rappers for main muscle characters (MC Jean Gab'1 is a french rapper) does not give the best results
Sadly this movie makes no exception
