The World Is Yours film review ★★★★★

The World Is Yours premiered in the Director's Fortnight at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Nobody is going to completely revolutionise gangster movies – but they'll still keep making them. To make the recycled formula worthwhile, what's needed is a fresh voice to shake things up, who will serve it to an audience in a colourful cocktail of witty comedy, disguised political commentary, and, of course, well-timed violence.

Romain Gavras is that voice. While his debut feature Our Day Will Come may not have left a major mark, his experience directing music videos made waves around the world. His work on M.I.A's 'Born Free' led the video to be banned by YouTube in the US and the UK – the nine-minute film, portraying a genocide against red haired people and alluded to the extra-judicial killing of Tamil males by the Sri Lankan Army, was unprecedented.

With The World Is Yours, Gavras cooks up a thrillingly violent and entertaining feature of his own. His affable hero, Farès (a bumbling but still determined Karim Leklou), is facing a classic conundrum. He wants to get out of the gangster business, but needs to do one last job, to get one last chunk of money, before retiring to a nice house with a nice pool so he can just live a nice, nice life.

Except it's never that easy, and this last feat is particularly loaded with ridicule and ravages – among the obstacles to overcome, there's his overbearing mother, a couple of guys obsessed with the illuminati, an older accomplice who's barely much help (Vincent Cassel has never been funnier), and a spunky young love interest. Oh, and drugs. Naturally, their livelihoods rely on the success of a drug deal.

A lot of characters and motivations blur into one cacophonous coup, but it still thrives, as it's one that's soundtracked and acted with effervescent silliness. Scenes of violence are punctuated by ethereal, synth-led loops (courtesy of electro darlings Jamie XX and SebastiAn, tasked with scoring the film). It's a world of aesthetic outlandishness, woozy and exciting in turn.

Everyone's in it for their own skin, which makes for slippery but beaming characters that entertain in their selfish attempts to con each other out of any sense of dignity. Where other gangster movies pride themselves on layered, slow-burn politics, The World Is Yours splashes cross-genre societal satire and snappy idiosyncrasies simultaneously, to paint a bold jukebox picture of greed, lopsided glamour and zippy, stylish fun.