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 andits is a German movie about a rock band made up
of 4 different women with only one thing in common -- they're all currently
serving sentences in prison. The band is led by vocalist and anti-social Luna, a
gifted magician and songwriter with aspirations of becoming a rock star; Angel,
the flirtatious and happy-go-lucky bassist; Marie, the oldest member of the
band, who plays keyboard between attempts to take her own life; and Emma, a new
prison arrival who at first refuses to join the band, but eventual acquiesces to
life in prison and becomes the band's drummer.
If you think Bandits is just a
German Chicks in Prison movie, you'd be wrong.
The women are only in prison long enough for us to know their
personalities before they're suddenly on the run on the outside world. Their
unexpected flight from prison is courtesy of a gig they've been scheduled to do
on the outside world: ironically enough, a policeman's ball!
In a funny sequence of events, as the women are making
their escape in the parking lot of the policeman's ball, a female politician up for re-election is
making a speech at the podium inside the building about giving the women a
second chance! When the politician asks a cop next to her what the band's name
is in order to introduce them, the cop shouts back, "Escape attempt!"
meaning, of course, that an escape attempt is going on. The politician mistakes
the cop's warning for the band's name!
It's a hilarious scene, one that takes
place moments after Luna has kicked the stuffing out of a prison guard who had
slapped her, insulted the women one by one, and torn up a precious picture that is Marie's
only link to the outside world. Before the escape is cold, the cops sic a
hotshot cop on the women's trail. The cop is so cocky that he promises he'll
have the girls in custody again before his pack of cigarettes run out.
"Bandits," incidentally, is the band's name.
Half of Bandits' running time looks like a music
video. Not in the sense that it's shot in the fashion of a music video, although
it does look like that in a way. It looks like a music video in the sense that,
well, in-between the traditional scenes the women breaks into music videos,
complete with instruments and vocals. Strangely enough, I found the
music video interludes to be very entertaining. The songs are mostly in English
and they're, well, pretty good! Surprisingly so, actually.
The music videos
doesn't distract from the movie a bit, since every jump into a music video is
integrated into the movie effortlessly, as in the women's practice scenes in
prison, or their music video for the TV cameras who forgets to include the
women's prison escape in their daily round-up of prison escapes, prompting the
women to call the TV and arrange a meeting. As the women whines, why does the
news only care about men escaping? Don't they (the women escapees) matter?
In another ironic twist of fate (yes, this movie is full of
ironies, as per its point) the women's sudden fame as fugitives gets them a
record deal with the same record company that had rejected them before. This, after attempting to swindle the women's rights to
their music for $50,000, and failing to do so, goes ahead and does it anyway.
Just who is the real crook here? By now it
should be clear that the movie is a social satire with a nice accompanying
drumbeat.
Nothing in the movie is actually very realistic, unless German police
are really this ineffective when it comes to hunting down 4 women escaping in
one bright green van after another. As to point out how ineffective the cops
are, the women makes their escape from, at first, a building full of cops and
then a bar full of cops. Later on, the women are mobbed in a street by autograph
seekers after the record executive releases their album and posters their mug
shots all over town. The women and their fans breaks out into a choreographed
dancing routine and once again escapes form an army of cops!
Director Garnier does a tremendous job with Bandits, managing to merge the unreal world of
fame with the women's personal trials and tribulations. Each women gets their
fair share of background story, and by movie's end, we feel that we know all of
the intimately. The movie works as a surreal social commentary as well as a
Chicks on the Run film.
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