La nuit se traîne

In the movie Night Call, Maddie is a student who works as a locksmith at night. One night, she goes to Claire, a mysterious woman, to open her apartment door. After helping Claire, Maddie realizes that Claire lied about her identity and deceived her. Following this incident, Maddie is unintentionally involved in a dangerous adventure in which she must prove her innocence during one night....

About the movie The movie Night Call is a French action thriller film directed by Michiel Blanchart in 2024. The movie Night Call stars Jonas Bloquet, Jonathan Feltre, Natacha Krief, and In the end, it was a very ordinary movie.

Wow... After seeing the trailer first, I was expecting a lot of this film. And I sure wasn't disappointed after seeing it.

I have to say, I've seen quite the Belgian blockbusters and hidden gems, as I collect them (as they are hard to find sometimes), but this one is up there among the best for me.

Non-stop brutal action scenes will come your way, well acted and super engaging from the start.

A simple yet clever story that delivers in a very realistic way, without trying to be anything else.

Apart from... - maybe - the very end.

The ending felt somewhat anticlimactic, given the progression of the story, and they did put in a tiny little political stance. However, it didn't make the main story fall short in any way, but I wasn't sure what to think of the ending as it was.

Overall, a solid 9/10.

Although 'La nuit se traîne' is set in Brussels, it has all the characteristics of a run-of-the-mill thriller from Hollywood. A gentleman-criminal living in a luxury high rise overlooking the city? Check. A high speed car chase ending in a crash? Check. A man escaping from his pursuers by entering a subway car that's about to leave the platform? Check. Two creepy looking thugs using violence againt anyone standing in their way? Check.

These tired Hollywood clichés and the abundance of violence stand in the way of what this film could have been: an original and well-written nail-biter with an interesting social dimension. The screenplay is clever enough. The film takes place during one night, in which locksmith Mady is drawn against his will into a dirty affair which keeps on getting more complicated and, for him, more life-threatening. In order to safe his life, he has to retrieve a large sum of cash before dawn. The events take place against the background of a large Black Lives Matter-demonstration.

But instead of concentrating on the story, the film takes unnecessary detours, and fails to explain some improbabilities. On the plus side, the director has put a lot of effort in filming the nocturnal streets of Brussels, and succeeds in showing the city from a nice aesthetic perspective. For viewers who are familar with the city, trying to recognize the locations is a nice game.

I liked the acting especially from the guy who played the main character but the ending fell flat and was very unsatisfying. The story itself had it's moments however, there were too many situations where the main character made silly or very bad decisions or where the scenes felt too "convenient" for the sake of pushing the story along. I. E. The scene with Theo and Mady in the car with the female activist or the club scene. This film had a lot of potential but the execution was basic and ok. It didn't leave a lasting impression on me. The actors were great. I just wish their talents were displayed in a better script. The guy who played "Mady" is a very talented actor. I look forward to seeing him in more projects.

Or is it bad call? No pun intended either way. For a first time feature length movie this really is well done. Especially the camera work (be it a car chase or a foot chase ... the movement of the camera is really one of the stars - if not the star of it all.

On the other hand this has quite a few issues with logic. And I mean the internal logic of the movie. As in what it tells us and what it shows us. There is a situation where one person could shoot another person .... which obviously would end the movie prematurely. There are other things that would make sense, but the pace of the movie likely helps you not to overthink the whole thing ... life matters ... and your own even more than others. So social commentary? A little for sure ... but is more interested in telling a suspenseful story ... than anything else.