MovieChat Forums > Braquo (2009) Discussion > Is it just me? Did no one else find seas...

Is it just me? Did no one else find season 2 moronic and error filled?


***************Spoliers************


Ok so lets start with the plot

A corrupt police oficer facing prison, is allowed to "escape" as part of a secret op, and fake kill people . Now a high profile fugitive sought for murder, and face plastered accross national news, he nevertheless casually walks around crowded Paris and all his usual hotspots and teams with his coleagues to steal a gun that shoots through people, so long as they wear a special bracelet.

This science fiction weapon (in what is supposed to be a cop show) is demonstrated to the audience by way of 1 of the characters inviting a bunch of millionaires round to a conference, shooting the gun at them (without telling them what it is) and having them joyously applaud, the bullet holes behind them as if a machine gun had not just been fired at them.

And the businesswoman who wants them to steal this miracle weapon, is the owner herself, in order so that she can kill the president of Angola, with the weapon and not get blamed.

Yet despite going to such lenghs to avoid blame for this political assasination and kill absolutely everyone involved, (around which the whole season is supposed to spin) when the moment to kill the Angolan president comes, she informs him, his own aides and senior advisers to the French president that she is going to kill him, which seems to defeat the whole purpose of stealing the gun and killing all involved in the first place.

Lying between this business woman (who has been sitting on a grudge for 18 years before conveniently deciding to act just now) and the ex cops, are 4 ex special forces who begin the season by shooting up a bunch of random innocent families, solely to gain position for a raid.

Despite not thinking twice about killing women and children, their characters are by the second half of the season totally transformed into these ultimate men of honour who do everything solely to honor their fallen comrades and their families and whos word is bond and refuse to kill caplan or his coleagues even after finding out that he has killed their brother, and even after they find out that he has betrayed them them

The behaviour of Caplan and the others is also confusing (considering the whole point of the show is that they are supposed to be among the best cops in France). To check if someone is wearing a wire they merely ask them to lift their shirts as if it was still the 60's and the police couldnt get a more sophisticated recording device then a casette strapped to the stomach. This is nevertheless a lot more than they do when the colonel gives them a car. Despite the mutual distrust between them, they nevertheless start plotting about how they will betray him immediately upon entering it.
Speaking of cars, 1 of the cops is totally broke, and the others are very poor, yet this does not stop them from sparingly crashing their cars into suspects and leaving them on the road.

Another bizzare action comes to mind from the first episodes of the season, where they spend almost all their efforts on killing the big bald gangster from season 1 (lemoine). When they finally find him - shooting up an entire mafia family with a machine gun on the street in broad daylight, and have their scopes set on him, they deliberately call out his name and wait for him to turn around and start shooting back. This forces them to duck for cover and allows him to run off. Top cops indeed.

The criminals are even more amateur. None of the criminals have any manpower whatsoever, nor do they take any precautions against being killed.

The superbusinesswoman who just invented a gun which shoots through people and is the sole owner of this gun in the entire world and mixes daily with top generals, presidential advisors and foreign leaders, uses for her entire conspiracy 1 careless assasin, who not only runs the entire operation and takes out all enemies himself, but also is the one charged to carry out the presidential assasination. This careless assasin never even checks to see if he is being watched or followed, even when Caplan car is literraly a few metres away from him.

This nevertheless greatly tops Lemoin who has absolutely no manpower and runs his entire and rather sophisticated operation entirely by himself.

The old woman, who has enough money to buy 400 blocks of gold like candy, has her 2 sons and 2 guards to run her multi million euro conspiracy, whereas the the Jewish or Sweedish mafia or whatever it was, which at 1 point it is said is worth hundreds of millions of euros, has a luxurious 2 workers, and the entire organization is wiped out by a pizza delivery boy with 4 bullets, in 10 seconds. Internatiolan criminal organization, gone, just like that.

The corrupt general who despite being warned by 2 differnet people that they will kill him, still leaves no one to protect him at the door and killer simply walks in and kills him. Lemoin meanwhile walks into the lions den all alone himself. The lawyer who at the beginning wields so much power has only 2 workers himself and also is killed easily. The Colombians who promise Caplan that they will find him and kill him, do nothing.

Whereas most shows take a season to get through 1 criminal organization, or even 1 enemy often more than 1, Braquo gets through 6, all wiped out, in about 5 episodes and has dozens of antagonists.

And Vogel. Normally a character going from Elliot Ness, to hannibal lector to mohammed atta in 4 episodes would raise some alarm bells, but in this show it seems no more bizzare than anything else.

He clearly though made no preperations to go to war against the police department, he has not been shown making the money required for that, and the scene with the thug selling him the bomb showed that he is clearly on his own.

Yet he has just told a police officer that he is responsible for the murder of 1 policeman and that he is about to kill another 3.

12 rounds is a crap movie and has a rating of 5.5 on here. But at least the criminal in 12 rounds was a mega rich international mastermind, and not a broke ex cop on his own, so it made sense in that regard.

But looking at the scores for Braquo on here, it seems likely braquo season 3 will get a higher score than 12 rounds, and i do wonder how many of those extra points will be simply, because it is french.

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I totally agree. if you check it out you'll se that Olivie Marchal(creator and director of the first season) didnt have anything to do with the second one.
the second season was somewhat ridiculous and the only thing i liked is the ending lol

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Braquo Season 1 was quite a good show, even if a little too much The Shield oriented. Season 2 is just a bore. The only character fleshed out by the writer is Caplan, all the other actors are treated like extras. Dialogue is ridiculous and action over the top. Coudl'n't watch the whole thing. Too bad Olivier Marchal didn't supervize this one.

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I thoroughly enjoyed Season 2. I readily concede that the plot is far-fetched and full of holes, but I was engrossed enough not to care. It was more like The Bourne Identity or 24 than The Shield, but it was still very entertaining.

Season 1 had its share of unlikely coincidences and gaps in logic --- so much action is stuffed into eight episodes that it's not exactly realistic --- but I tend to blip over that stuff, as long as the atmospherics and production design and characterization are up to par.





We report, you decide; but we decide what to report.

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It's fiction. Make believe. Fantasy. A story. Not real. ENTERTAINING.
Saw Skyfall a few weeks ago. Not at all realistic. I want my money back.

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All the criticisms were true ... didn't matter a damn, immensely entertaining and exciting.


But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.

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The OP is absolutely right.
Season 1 was a gripping, gritty drama with well rounded characters.
Season 2, while it had many eye rolling moments, was, for the most part, kinda entertaining IF you took it as an over the top silly romp. But it threw any sense of logic and character development out the window.

And while all the stories somewhat tied together in the end, the Vogel "transformation" can't be excused. That's just plain stupid.
Didn't fit in the story at all, and was sooooo unbelievable.
And while there are many plot holes, since this is crucial to the end of the season: how in the world did Vogel know when Vachewski would be in his car?! It's a remote bomb in a police garage...?!
No wonder there's no 3rd season.

Well, at least we have Season 1.

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Agree. Season 1 was great; season 2 sucked. As if season 2 was written by a schoolboy, that's the believability level. I was able to get trough only a couple of episodes, with more and more fast-forwarding.

Pity. It could have been great for a long-time. And apparently (above) there will not be a third season.

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Great OP!

***SPOILERS FOLLOW***


I finished series 2 yesterday. Plot-wise it was ridiculous and I found series 1 OTT and at times implausible! I agree that very little time is devoted to characterisation although Madame Arifa has to be one of my favourite characters ever! What they did with her, and to an extent the head of the Armenians, was provide lots of lingering close-ups so that we gain a sense of the physicality of the character especially when eating and drinking. Never have I been more fascinated and simultaneously repulsed as when watching Mde Arifa light a cigarettes with her long nails painted dark blue before seeing the curve of her carefully plucked eyebrows, puckered lips from too much smoking and Cruella de Ville style hair. Amazing.

It is because of the handling of some characters, as with Mde Arifa, that Braquo remains watchable and a compelling watch at that. It helps that many of the actors are charismatic, familiar faces. So nice to see Hubert Kounde; even under used he has a compelling screen presence.

On the matter of Vogel. I don't think the way his character develops was odd. We know from series 1 that his pursuit of Caplan and his team is unhealthy. His downfall at the hands of his nemesis and then the relentless pursuit by one of his former colleagues tips him into outright sadism. His treatment of the prostitute and Borg was not Lectorish at all. He was sadistically taking out his foe in an elaborate way (let's not forget this is Braquo :D) so that he hides any evidence against himself. My only disappointment was the shaving of his fantastic grey coloured mop!

It's rumoured there is to be a series 3 several years down the line from number 2. I hope so. My only sorrow is that Theo (and Nicolas Duvauchelle) will not be part of it; he became a more interesting character in series 2 than the ever-holy Caplan with Roxane and Walter as his loyal sidekicks.

Did you say my eyes or thighs are beautiful?

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I find it quite odd, for a show you don't seem to like, that you would waste the time to write such a lengthy review for an audience that you clearly deem beneath you...

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I think more than the plot, this series gives us some insight into French society (from a law and order perspective but also a bit wider than that). Considering there are not much shows on British TV, I think that is one of the reasons few people like me watch it (and less for the plot)

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Completely agree with OP but for some strange reason, I LOVED every minute of both seasons. Weird but something about the whole thing was very entertaining, even though it should have been labeled as stupid.

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I noticed a very BIG goof in the beginning of season two. The fugitive cop steels a brand new Peugeot 508 without any key by just making touch the wires... This is absoluty impossible on that generation of cars. No key, no start !

All cars sold in France are equiped with a coded transponder since a long time.
Writers should really be more efficient...

Season one was awesome, season two was bad and season 3 was so so.

What will be season 4 (next on Canal +).

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