Above the Law

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Jean-François Hensgens directs. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Produced in Belgium. Dialogue in French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 186 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
• 2Released 9 years ago.
• 3Lean credit list — fewer than 30 people officially credited.
• 4Lubna Azabal and Olivier Gourmet and Bouli Lanners carry the top of the cast.
• 5IMDB entry: tt6901252 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Runtime

86 min · 1h 26m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Original language

FR

Certification (US)

NC-17

IMDB

Above the Law (2017) ↗

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

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Wallpaper

Community reviews

What people are saying

• zyzoo872021-04-24

  With such seasoned actors we could expect a good thriller. Go your way: a real turnip.The script is more than predictable.Why make a movie? a simple TV movie is more than enough.

  Read full review ↓
• CinemaSerf2026-10-02
  ★ 6/10

  Now if you were high up in government with a nefarious scheme in play, who better to pass the blame onto than an acknowledged bank robber who has no obvious defence? Well that's the situation "Valken" (Olivier Gourmet) finds himself in some thirty years after his crime spree came to a successful end and he retired. Now a copycat hijacking has been executed - but so have all of the witnesses, including a prosecuting magistrate who was investigating another high-profile case. "Valken" was never unduly violent with his crimes, but there are enough similarities for the authorities to track him down, and after some lively car chasing he finds himself incarcerated. Nobody is listening to his protestations of innocence, so he realises that he is just going to have to escape and do the investigative work himself. That's the thrust of the rest of the story as he finds a network of corruption reaching high into the echelons of the Belgian state. This film starts off by hitting the ground running, and the first twenty minutes or so do capture our imagination but thereafter it sort of settles down into something a little too formulaic that relies rather too heavily on the punchy score to create much of the tension, and puts not enough effort into any detailed characterisations nor even the often overly contrived plot. Lubna Azabal delivers quite efficiently as pursuing cop "Lucie" and there are glimmers of the interneccine from time to time amidsts the gloomily shot photography, but in the end it falls the way of most heist films in that the build up is never really done justice to by the denouement. That said, it races along with plenty of decent set-piece action scenes and Gourmet knows how to hold a film together confidently - so you probably won't be disappointed. Just maybe not blown away.

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la FWB

  BE

• 

  Versus Production

  BE

Key crew

• ProducerJacques-Henri Bronckart
• ProducerOlivier Bronckart

Release history · US

When it landed

• Theatrical2017-12-06NC-17

Also known as

International titles

• 튀에흐KR
• ZabijáciCZ