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Review: Bastille Day
Bastille Day (15)
USA 2016 92 mins Dir: James Watkins Cast: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Jose Garcia, Kelly Reilly
“Pick my pockets again and I’ll shoot you in the face.” With lines like that, it’s quite clear Paris-based actioner Bastille Day isn’t on the level of Marcel Proust. Even so there are pleasures to be found in a movie that derives its relatively low-fi thrills from a distinct absence of magic hammers, flying metal suits or indestructible super-soldiers.
is needed now More than ever
Woman in Black and Eden Lake director James Watkins jumps genres and enters an altogether more bone-crunching gear for this contemporary tale of terrorist intrigue. (Let’s face it though, the diabolical hoodie antagonists from the latter movie could give these villains a run for their money.) When American pickpocket Michael Mason (Richard Madden) is unwittingly implicated in a deadly bomb blast in Paris, he finds himself earmarked as the key suspect by the authorities. Before long he’s tracked down by no-nonsense CIA maverick (is there any other kind?) Sean Briar (Idris Elba), with whom he must team up to uncover a deadly conspiracy in the run-up to the eponymous celebrations.
Yes, the storyline really is that unremarkable but there’s crunchy enjoyment in Watkins’ solid staging of the various set-pieces, from a sub-Bourne rooftop chase sequence to a genuinely impressive, face-obliterating fight inside the back of a moving van. Although the wobbly American accent makes it clear that Elba’s Wire days are far behind him, he makes for a watchable chalk and cheese partnership with Game of Thrones veteran Madden as they scurry around the Parisian streets knocking off the baddies with everything short of a baguette; one sequence in which Mason contrives a series of events to lift an important piece of evidence from a suspect is witty and well-staged.
There’s also an intriguing twist as to where the central threat is actually coming from, a refreshing change-of-pace from the ludicrous bad guy stereotyping of the Taken movies to which this clearly owes a debt. Charlotte Le Bon resonates strongly as the wannabe bomber whose initial crisis of conscience gets the whole plot going, Although it all inevitably devolves into the usual running/jumping/shooting malarkey, there’s also something pleasingly old-fashioned about a 21st century action movie that’s grounded not so much in a plausible but a recognisable reality. And for all those claiming this is little more than Elba’s James Bond audition tape, there’s clearly more evidence of Jason Bourne in the scrappy fight sequences. On the basis of his brawny performance here, one can certainly imagine Elba as Matt Damon’s two-fisted antagonist in a future movie.
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