Critic Reviews

The Ardennes may be saturated in dark blues and snow-covered blankness, but it burns with bright fury as Robin Pront inches closer to his film’s inevitable breaking point.

Shooting in dull, wintry colours, the mood is set for a story that can only end badly.

The film’s bleak, Coen-esque sense of isolation, cold brutality and clutch of confident performances...make for a decent and engaging story that culminates in an enjoyably nasty conclusion.

A promising if not quite audacious debut by Robin Pront, the film benefits from a solidly envisioned family dynamic but doesn't really generate much heat until its final act.

This is a punchy and promising debut from Pront.

In the end, for all the artistry on display, The Ardennes is more admirable than inspiring. It has style, and even suspense, but relatively little imagination.

Even though, in retrospect, The Ardennes feels a little obvious and secondhand, it unfolds with enough speed and wit to hold your attention.

First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.

Dave’s dread of his brother hooks The Ardennes onto a long chain of fraternal crime dramas, from “The Public Enemy” (1931) and “On the Waterfront” (1954) to “We Own the Night” (2007). Pront can hardly be blamed if his actors lack the sinew of Cagney or Brando.

The Ardennes is an odd mixture of glum-chic style and emotional curiosity, a story of brotherly tensions that primarily comes off like a movie posing as a story of brotherly tensions.