This very explosive frenzied thriller will have you hooked from the opening chase through the streets of Paris, and the frenetic pace never lets up for the next 88 minutes.
Sartet, the man being chased, ends up in hospital and there is a failed attempt to murder him there and Samuel, a nurse’s assistant, saves his life. Thugs kidnap Samuel’s heavily pregnant wife Nadia as an inducement to make him help Sartet escape from hospital whilst under police guard. It all goes horribly wrong, people get killed, and now Samuel is also on the run as a wanted fugitive too.
Two rival Police Inspectors and their teams get involved, and not all of them are ‘good guys’, and they provide further strands to the unwinding of an intriguing plot that link Sartet to the murder of a prominent businessman. It then becomes a matter of life of death for all of them as to who finds Sartet and Samuel first. It has an exhilarating climax in a chaotic police station when you are never really sure who the ‘baddies’ are and will they come through in the end.
This exhilarating French movie excels on so many levels. The casting is faultless with the rugged North African actor Roschdy Zem (Oscar nominated ‘Days of Glory’) as Sartet, Gilles Lelouche (‘Mesrine’) as Samuel the out-of-his-depth Nurse’s Assistant, and the stunning beautiful Spanish actress Elena Araya (‘Talk To Her’, ‘Sex & Lucia’) as Nadia, and I loved the tough confident female Inspector played by Mirielle Perrier.
This is the second movie written and directed by Fred Cavaye: his 2008 debut was ‘Anything For Her’ an enormous critical and commercial success in Europe, which Hollywood immediately copied and even with the inestimable Paul Haggis at the helm still ended up as watered-down flop ‘The Next 3 Days’ starring the ubiquitous Russell Crowe. This is a genre that the French so excel at, (there is one scene when an opera singer on T.V. is belting out the same aria from Catalina’s ‘La Wally’ that featured prominently in ‘Diva’ one of my all-time fav. French thrillers) and one that I would not hesitate to suggest that they do much better than Hollywood.
See this original movie : don’t wait for the copy-cat version which is bound to follow soon, but be warned you will have no finger-nails left!
★★★★★★★★
Click for Trailer
★★★★★★★★
Click for Trailer
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