Ganglands

Last updated
Ganglands
Ganglands poster.jpg
Release poster
Genre
Created by
Starring
Country of originFrance
Original languageFrench
No. of seasons2
No. of episodes12
Production
Running time44–51 min
Production companies
  • Labyrinthe Films
  • Netflix
Original release
NetworkNetflix
Release24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)

Ganglands (French : Braqueurs) is a French action crime drama television series created by Hamid Hlioua and Julien Leclercq. The first season of the series premiered on Netflix on 24 September 2021 with six episodes. The second season premiered on 17 February 2023, also with six episodes. [1] [2] The series shares the title of Leclercq's 2015 film Braqueurs , but while both feature Sami Bouajila as the lead robber, they share no characters or storylines. [3]

Contents

Premise

A crew of armed robbers led by Mehdi, an experienced professional, is drawn into a turf war between drug lords in Belgium after Mehdi’s teenage niece, Shaïnez, and her girlfriend, Liana, accidentally steal eight kilograms of cocaine while robbing a top dealer’s courier. Mehdi and Liana form an unlikely working partnership and a strong emotional bond while they fight for their lives and to protect their families and friends from spiraling troubles in Brussels and Antwerp.

Episodes

No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air date
1"Episode I" Julien Leclercq Hamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)
2"Episode II"Julien LeclercqHamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)
3"Episode III"Julien LeclercqHamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)
4"Episode IV"Julien LeclercqHamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)
5"Episode V"Julien LeclercqHamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)
6"Episode VI"Julien LeclercqHamid Hlioua24 September 2021 (2021-09-24)

Episode I

An experienced heist leader robs a gold refinery with his heavily armed crew. In an unrelated situation across the city, and unbeknownst to the heist leader, his teenage niece is making money posing as a prostitute to lure men to encounters and rob them. She and a female accomplice steal a man's personal effects, but they are unaware he is a drug courier. They are dismayed to find eight kilos of cocaine in his bag. His boss, a drug baron, kidnaps the niece and demands the return of his drugs. The heist leader negotiates with the drug lord, who gives him one day to recover the cocaine.

Episode II

The inexperienced teenaged robbers try to sell the cocaine to a low-level dealer, but the dealer's gang take the drugs without paying. One of the teens makes up a story about the cocaine belonging to a Moroccan drug mafia to try to scare them into returning the drugs. The heist leader tracks the teenage accomplice and her friends to an indoor RV warehouse. At the same time that he holds the accomplice at gunpoint, seeking the location of his niece, the heavily-armed drug gang arrives to threaten the teen robbers. The heist leader and the teens escape in a hail of gunfire. The heist leader and the teen accomplice get the cocaine back from the drug gang. Meanwhile, the drug baron faces scheming on the part of his family members who work in his drug business. Mehdi returns the drugs to the drug lord, but the drug baron does not return the kidnapped niece; instead, he tells Medhi to steal 300 kilos of cocaine for him as it arrives in Antwerp.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bank robbery</span> Crime of stealing from a bank using violence

Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.

The West End Gang is a Canadian organized crime group in Montreal, Quebec. An Irish mob group originating from the Irish-Canadian ethnic enclave of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1950s, the majority of the gang's earnings were initially derived from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, extortion, and armed robbery, with its criminal activities focused on, but not restricted to, the west side of Montreal. The West End Gang came to prominence via a series of high-profile bank robberies between the 1950s and the 1970s, a period when Montreal was known as "Bank Robbery capital of North America". Due to the gang's control of illegal activity at the Port of Montreal, it moved into drug trafficking and became one of the most influential criminal organizations in Canada.

The Serbian mafia, or Serbian organized crime, are various criminal organizations based in Serbia or composed of ethnic Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and Serbian diaspora. The organizations are primarily involved in smuggling, arms trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, assassinations, heists, assault, protection rackets, murder, money laundering and illegal gambling. Ethnic Serb organized crime groups are organized horizontally; higher-ranked members are not necessarily coordinated by any leader. According to criminologists and law enforcement authorities, the Serbian mafia is the most powerful in Europe.

The Arifs are a south-east London-based Turkish criminal organization heavily involved in armed robbery, drug trafficking and other racketeering-related activities within London's underworld since the late 1960s. Following the downfall of the Kray brothers, the Arifs were one of several criminal organisations who took control of the London underworld including the Clerkenwell crime syndicate and the Brindle family. with whom they were engaged in a highly publicised gangland war during the 1990s.

<i>American Gangster</i> (TV series) American TV series or program

American Gangster is a documentary television series that aired on BET. The show features some of Black America's most infamous and powerful gangsters and organized crime groups. It is narrated by Ving Rhames. The series premiere, on November 28, 2006, amassed around one million viewers. The first season ended on January 9, 2007, and comprised 6 episodes; a season 1 DVD was released on October 23, 2007. The second season aired October 3, 2007; a season 2 DVD was released on June 10, 2008. In April 2009, A&E Networks purchased the rights to air seasons 1–3 on their networks. They can be seen primarily on the Bio Channel and the flagship A&E Channel. They can also be seen on A&E's Crime and Investigation Network.

Mickey Green was an English gangster and drug lord who had also held Irish nationality. A convicted armed robber he had allegedly been one of Britain's leading drug dealers for many years and was said to be worth at least £75 million. His surname is often spelled in newspapers as Greene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tommy Comerford</span> English gangster (1932–2003)

Thomas Anthony "Tommy" Comerford, also known as "Tacker" and "Top Cat", was an English gangster. A longtime figure in Liverpool's underworld, Comerford dominated criminal activity in the Merseyside area, spending over 34 years in prison during the course of his criminal career. He was involved in narcotics, and was one of the first criminals to establish an international drug trafficking network in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Matthews (drug trafficker)</span> American drug trafficker

Frank Larry Matthews, also known as Black Caesar, Mark IV and Pee Wee, was an American drug trafficker and crime boss who sold heroin and cocaine throughout the eastern United States from 1965 to 1972. He operated in 21 states and supplied drug dealers throughout every region of the country. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ranks Matthews as one of the top ten drug traffickers in U.S. history and he is estimated to have had US$20 million in savings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herman Lamm</span> German-American bank robber

Herman Karl Lamm, known as Baron Lamm, was a German-American bank robber. A former Prussian Army soldier who immigrated to the United States, Lamm believed a heist required all the planning of a military operation. He pioneered the concepts of "casing" a bank and developing escape routes before conducting the robbery. Using a meticulous planning system called "The Lamm Technique", he conducted dozens of successful bank robberies from the end of World War I.

<i>Trouble in Paradise</i> (Parker novel) 1998 novel by Robert B. Parker

Trouble in Paradise is a crime novel by Robert B. Parker, the second in his Jesse Stone series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Lawton</span> American YouTuber and former jewel thief

Lawrence Robert Lawton is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. Lawton gained notoriety for committing a string of jewelry store robberies along the Atlantic Seaboard prior to his arrest in 1996. He spent 12 years in prison, and once released, began a career as a motivational speaker, life coach, and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brussels Airport diamond heist</span> 2013 diamond heist

On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately €38,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a single shot being fired.

The Crumlin-Drimnagh feud is a feud between rival criminal gangs in south inner city Dublin, Ireland. The feud began in 2000 when a drugs seizure led to a split in a gang of young criminals in their late teens and early twenties, most of whom had grown up together and went to the same school. The resulting violence has led to 16 murders and scores of beatings, stabbings, shootings and pipe bomb attacks.

Martin Hyland was a major Irish criminal and gang boss.

Eamon Dunne, nicknamed "The Don", was a major Irish organised crime figure from Finglas, North Dublin. He led a gang based in Finglas, Cabra, and Ballymun, who were involved in drug dealing, armed robbery, extortion and murder. He took control of the gang after the murder of crime boss Martin "Marlo" Hyland, who was shot dead in December 2006, and Gardaí suspect that Dunne, who was one of Hyland's closest associates, drove the getaway car for the killers.

<i>The Seven Five</i> 2014 American film

The Seven Five, also known as Seven Five Precinct, is a 2014 documentary directed by Tiller Russell, and produced by Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, and Sheldon Yellen. The film looks at police corruption in the 75th precinct of the New York Police Department during the 1980s. The documentary focuses on Michael Dowd and Patrick Eugene McKenna both corrupt DEA agents under cover for 10 years, who were arrested in 1987 leading to one of the largest police corruption scandals in New York City history. The documentary uses footage from the Mollen Commission investigation in 1992 and also provides in-depth commentary from Dowd, Ken Eurell, and Adam Diaz, among others. The documentary premiered at DOC NYC November 14, 2014.

<i>The Lufthansa Heist</i> 2015 non-fiction book

The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World is a non-fiction book written by Daniel Simone in collaboration with Henry Hill. It was published by Lyons Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, on August 1, 2015.

<i>The Crew</i> (2015 film) 2015 French film

The Crew is a 2015 French action thriller film directed and co-written by Julien Leclercq. The film is about a Parisian heist crew led by Yanis Zeri which specializes in well-planned robberies of armoured trucks. Although Yanis has managed to survive for years as a career criminal by a combination of his sophisticated operations, his low-profile, modest style of living, and his focus on what the team is good at, after his younger brother Amine makes a serious mistake after a recent heist that entangles them with a drug gang, the gang leader forces the crew to do a dangerous heist of a heroin shipment.

Gangs in Liverpool have been in existence since the early-19th century. There were also various sectarian 'political' gangs based in and around the city during this period. During the 1960s and 1970s, crime in Liverpool mainly focused on theft and armed-robbery. In the late 1970s, drugs became the new and most profitable way for gangs to earn money and made local criminals very wealthy in a short space of time. Liverpool’s modern organised crime centres mainly on the drug trade. Merseyside police have reported in 2023 that as many as 120 gangs are operating around Merseyside.

<i>Earth and Blood</i> 2020 French-language film

Earth and Blood is a 2020 French action thriller film directed by Julien Leclercq and starring Sami Bouajila, Eriq Ebouaney and Samy Seghir. The film is about a violent showdown at an isolated sawmill that occurs when a young employee hides eight kilos of a gang's stolen cocaine at the mill. When the heavily armed gang members come to recover their drugs, the sawmill owner stages a last stand to protect his teenage daughter.

References

  1. "Stream It Or Skip It: 'Ganglands' on Netflix, Where French Thieves And Dealers Fight Each Other For What's Theirs". Decider. 27 September 2021. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  2. "Netflix's Ganglands Review: Drugs, Rivalries and Deaths". Leisure Byte. 24 September 2021. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  3. Vincentelli, Elizabeth (29 September 2021). "A Specialist in Short and Lethal Movie Thrillers Jumps to TV". The New York Times . Retrieved 19 February 2023.