Point Blank

Outside of Hollywood, good and realistic action films can be successful without the Hollywood Big 3 of American action films.....CGI, car chases and boo-coo explosions. And, French films always deliver when mean, harsh, brutal and uncaring play the main roles. Great looking pregnant wife, Liam Neesom-resembling husband, despicable and brutal criminals uncaring about human values and life, and brutal dirty cops even less caring about human life made this one of my faves for the year so far.

Point Blank was a 100% serious film with great pacing and no smart-ass or comedic side tracks or poorly placed romance throw-ins as are so often stupidly done by Hollywood, plus it had plenty of the most terrifying and brutal behavior of human psychopathy to scare you silly. Other than a few timing errors where the director stayed with a few scenes longer than he should have for best effect, such as the one when the dirty cop was discovered, it was a well done seat-edge thriller to the end. And, yes, we all knew how it would end, as all those horrible experiences resulted in a typical ending.......good for the good guys and bad for the baddies.

How regular people in real life could ever have more or less normal lives after all that bloody terror and murder is beyond my understanding, but somehow these film characters seemed to be able to do it.

Point Blank (2010)

Not to be confused with the semi-classic 1967 movie of the same title with Lee Marvin, this is not a remake or an echo of that. What this French action thriller is fits another category--the non-stop kinetic run from the bad-guys film, which has become a kind of staple. Think the Bourne movies, or a couple later Liam Neeson films, where the hero gets himself into a terrible situation that requires running and running and running.

And that's enough, in a way, because you can't stop looking. There are no lulls. In fact, some of the moments have such kinetic surprise to them they deserve study. Your stomach will turn. Don't expect a big rationale. Don't even quite expect to care for anything except that our main man, and his wife, survive the ordeal. There are crosses and double-crosses. There is horrid abuse of women which I could do without (the rationale might just be the perils of Pauline kind of thing, saving her with the handsome male to the rescue, but it's just plain abusive). There is one female cop who is a great tough archetype. And lots of bad violent men.

But, truly, none of this is meant to matter. You just grab onto the handles and don't let go. It's really really well made, visually, the camera-work and editing taking front seat. I'd see it on the biggest screen you can, since that's where it's all at.

Smart action thrillers are rare. Rarer still is a smart action thriller that features a complex yet comprehensible (and credible) plot, characters you care about, and vivid, crisp directing. "Point Blank" is one of these rarities. It utilizes many elements of classic action films—an innocent "good guy" who unwittingly becomes caught up in a dangerous plot, a woman in jeopardy, corrupt cops, and unexpected twists. The film avoids cliché, however, and it moves along at lightning speed (total running time is about 80 minutes). The French setting is an added bonus, and the acting and editing are very well done. Subtract a star if subtitles annoy you.

This is how you make an action-packed thriller. Swift, brutal and void of any kind of silly subplots that give too much time to words when the characters should just be racing for their lives. They quickly establish the characters in a clean and effective way and then shock you by going right into the action. With a very nice 80 minute runtime the film breezes by without dragging for a moment and you really just get caught up in the exciting chaos of it all. There's definitely no reinventing the wheel here, but it stands up with Taken and Running Scared as one of the best action films to come out this past decade. It was exactly what I wanted.

There were some moments that really made me sit up in my chair just by how much of a gut punch they were; some things I definitely didn't see coming. Gilles Lellouche is a great leading man, capable of portraying both the everyman and the action star qualities of his character while still being completely believable when he has to portray the dramatic moments to keep you on his side and understanding of what he is fighting for. It's stylish as hell and is seriously just pushing it's foot to pavement for the entire running time. This is a real crowd-pleaser.

This was a punchy, French, action based film that was quite good, but with more developed characters, could have been brilliant.

Point Blank is well paced, dramatic, entertaining and I suppose most importantly believable. A criminal escapes murder, whilst in hospital, and forces his nurse to team up with him, as he avoids the police and his killers. The reluctant nurse aids the gangster, with his kidnapped pregnant wife held captive, to escape what is a corrupt police unit. To say any more would almost spoil the plot.

PB is ambitious, true to the action-chase genre and boasts some nice French cinema, and culture elements (especially visually), but ultimately comes up short of anything other than just plain good. A refreshing spin on this sort of thing, providing a decent afternoon's viewing.