Though Pavee Lackeen’s thorough depiction of the disenfranchised included Ireland’s new ethnic minorities around the fringes, David Gleeson’s follow-up to Cowboys And Angels is the first indigenous feature to take the immigrant experience as its central theme. And a good thing too. Eriq Ebouaney stars as Joe, a bank security guard newly arrived from the DRC, who refuses to play ball when a Dublin gang kidnap his family and demand he play inside man on a robbery. Alas for ‘known scumbag’ James Frain and his gang, Joe, a survivor of some of the worst atrocities committed in the Congo, is not who he claims to be. Nor is his wife (N’Diaye) or son (Ssebunya).
In its finer moments The Front Line offers a coruscating depiction of African life in Dublin. Janitors mumble audibly about “Them” taking our jobs. A night in a grim hostel reminds us of the horrors many of these folks have left behind. Meanwhile, even the more sympathetic officials (specifically Gerard McSorley’s Garda liaison officer) remain suspicious of foreign nationals.
The film stumbles, however, by attempting to graft genre onto social realism. The central heist and a shoot-out on Henry Street are staged with aplomb, but like Veronica Guerin, the criminal element just doesn’t wash. Perhaps we’re simply too accustomed to the street grammar of Scorsese, but the native gangsters seem contrived and out of place. The West African underworld crew are less plausible still, arriving with a swagger rarely seen since Live And Let Die.
Their presence and the implication that such people now entirely run the drug trade (huh?) sails uncomfortably close to racial stereotyping. Happily, glossy direction and a superbly charismatic central performance from Eriq Ebouaney save the day as The Front Line moves toward a heartbreaking denouement.