24 Days

Knowing the outcome behind the true-life tragedy 24 Days doesn't diffuse the horror, the tension or the sadness of watching one family's drama unfold day after agonizing day when a son is kidnapped and hope dies.

The movie, starring Zabou Breitman, Jacque Gamblin, Pascal Elbé, Sylvie Testud, and Tony Harrisson, has a more upsetting dimension than most suspense dramas as it’s based on a true story, a story that touches on issues still roiling France today.

24 Days is neither subtle nor particularly sophisticated as filmmaking, but its refusal to reduce lived reality to generic tropes is admirable.

As a suspenseful true crime story, 24 Days succeeds. As a warning against the ever present dangers of anti-Semitism, it is eloquent and disturbing. It’s in combining the two that Arcady mishandles the case.

Mr. Arcady’s reliance on heavy-handed melodrama, on screaming women and on worried-looking men, winds everything so tightly that the anguish plateaus and the characters begin to seem like chess pieces in an argument.

The performances are engrossing — especially Harrisson as the short-tempered African Muslim. But veteran director Alexandre Arcady (“Last Summer in Tangiers,” “Hold Up”) seems more concerned with the message and moral lesson here than with suspense.

Despite strenuous efforts, 24 Days fails to make the case that Halimi would be alive now had the anti-Semitism of his abductors been properly recognized. And since that’s the film’s sole reason for existence, there’s not much else to say.