Bastille Day

Normally I only watch 7.0 and above but I was tired of scrolling and gave it a try. Nice, undercover CIA movie with a decent amount of action.

You have to forget that, during the making of this action film shot in Paris, the French capital was the scene of a brutal terrorist attack. Instead you have to go with the flow - and, boy, does it flow with constant flights and fights and a frenetically-cut chase sequence on rooftops that could have come straight out of a Bourne movie.

British director James Watkins has given us a thoroughly entertaining romp that never lets up and looks great. The plotting is utterly implausible but the hard-as-diamond core is the former CIA agent Briar played wonderfully by Britain's Idris Elba in a role that could be seen as an audition to be the next James Bond. Not at all sure about his 'singing' over the credits though ...

I always use subtitles since I don't hear well.

The spoken English was subtitled, which was helpful, but the long spoken exchanges between the French police/tactical/intelligence was spoken in French, but NONE of the French dialog WAS TRANSLATED and SUBTITLED.

Maybe not a huge issue except that the 'good guys' had maybe ten pages of dialog between them. The French speakers provided about 80% of 'The Take's' total spoken word.

Now, Idris Elba is the caliber of actor who doesn't need to chatter in order to get his thoughts out.

Still, with the Strong, Silent Type in the lead, there was no way to follow the plot. When we thought we'd identified the villians, we had to watch and wait for another character's confirmation of events.

I don't know who's responsible for subtitles...but really, our phones can transcribe a spoken voice message. We can speak to lock our doors, turn off our lights, and play our favorite music.

#pleasefixsubtitles

Michael Mason (Richard Madden) is an American pickpocket in Paris. Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon) is an anti-fascist who is recruited to place a bomb in an empty right wing party building. Sean Briar (Idris Elba) is a reckless CIA agent assigned to Paris. The three are pulled into a conspiracy to heighten the political atmosphere for a Die Hard scheme.

This proves to me that Idris Elba could have been a great Bond. The story is a good convoluted thriller. The only thing missing is a truly fun buddy chemistry. Madden needs to be a little funnier to make the pairing better. I'm reminded of 48 Hrs or various other odd couples. This is not quite up to that level. It's not as fun but it's a solid thriller.

This film (unfortunately) is most famous because it was set to come out at the same time as a Islamic terrorist attack in France, and one of the reasons I waited a while to watch this film was because I was wary of how Muslims would be portrayed in it etc. Let me without spoilers tell you this film is almost entirely unpolitical, with the 'Islamic threat' so far down the radar it can't even be said to be a theme.

Now on to the film! Do you like Idris Elba? If you don't, stop reading this review and never watch this film. This is his film. He plays a bad-ass CIA agent (there is an irony of a British actor playing a CIA man stationed in France) who does not like to follow rules, and he is on the trail of a master pick pocket (Richard Madden) who gets wrapped up in a plot to blow up France. Cliché, yes, but the film does avoid some obvious ones, surprising pleasantly at some points.

Elba is menacing, cool and always fantastic, and all of his co-stars pull their weight, but none are particularly likable, and they just have very little chemistry together. But, this is an action, thriller, so who really cares about that. The action is solid, but not mind blowing. The balance between action and thriller is about right, and the director does not get distracted with too many side characters or plots.

This is about as standard a movie as you can get, with the only real plus being Elba. He needs to do more action movies, he needs to be the next Bond. 6.5, but IMDb won't let me give it that score so I bump to a 7 on Elba's performance!