When a robbery in Paris goes bad, a Senegalese thief (our anti-hero, played by MC Jean Gab’1), finds himself a new gig when his cousin calls with an offer too good to be true. Black is a slick, fun, French heist flick set in Dakar, Senegal — the Paris of West Africa — that follows the title character as he does battle with mercenaries, wrestlers, arms dealers, Russians and a snake man, all over a cache of ill-gotten diamonds.

Borrowing from the (often terrible) Nollywood movies of Nigeria, Black gives the crime film a fresh and international spin that’s just crazy enough to work. The story deteriorates into a traditional African good-versus-evil morality tale that might seem more at home being told in a rural village rather than on the big screen, but director Pierre Laffargue manages to make it all work.

More Snatch than Shaft, this entertaining thriller, with some very strange special effects and a wicked Afrobeat and funk soundtrack, is out-of-the-ordinary and well worth catching.