No, you don`t get to relax for a moment. The action keeps going at a relentless, breakneck pace here – director Fred Cavaye keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the film.
Yet in this brilliantly mounted action film, relentless gun-slinging isn`t solely responsible for the adrenaline rush one gets; suspense is just as crucial for the thrills one experiences. The premise is simple: Samuel Pierret, a nurse, played by Gilles Lellouche, saves Sartet (Zem) from the brink of expiration. Sartet`s air supply had been cut, and had it not been for Samuel, would have already been dead. Unfortunately for him, he doesn`t know that Sartet is a wanted man and his one act gets him unwittingly embroiled in trouble. One morning, he steps into his living room and is clubbed unconscious by an intruder. When he regains consciousness, he finds his heavily pregnant wife gone, with a voice on the phone giving him strict instructions what to do if he wants his wife back: He has to go to the hospital, where the police have Sartet under a 24-hour guard, and he has to somehow enable this prisoner`s escape, or risk his wife`s life.
The propulsive forward momentum of the film is relentless and the action jolts and thrills even when grounded in realism there is no overblown CGI or fanciful wirework, and most of the stunts are extremely plausible. Some details regarding the characters` backgrounds are glossed over, but given the swift pacing of the action, one hardly has time to fret over such things. The editing is adroit and the cinematography sharp, and the cast turns in uniformly good performances, with Lellouche earning your sympathy and support with his nice guy affect, right from the very start.
Summary: An action thriller that takes the guilty out of pleasure, the film is coherently written, well-acted and expertly paced, despite a few implausibilities in the plot.
Rating: 4/5 Raymond Tan