While their Iberian neighbours have been focusing their cameras on fear for quite a while, French cinema has opted to thrill instead. No longer weighed down by the glum monochrome realism of the Nouvelle vague era, the noughties brought colour and humour care of Ozon and Jeunet, but also gave rise to a new breed of French directors interested in capturing the sort of gritty emotional and physical action that marked the breakthrough of Scorsese and other auteurs of the 70s. Guillaume Canet’s 2006 Tell No One, based on the novel by American writer Harlan Coben, took a distinctly pulp Hollywood story and Gaul-vanised it into a critical darling and international success, and was just greenlit to be remade by Ben Affleck. Hollywood has also taken notice of director Fred Cavayé, having turned his 2008 Anything for Her into a vehicle for Russell Crowe, released last year as The Next Three Days. Point Blank, Cavayé’s latest, sticks with his preferred husband saving wife formula, and while entertaining, doesn’t manage to stand out from the crowd.
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| Having forgot to press series link, the race was on to get back for Come Dine With Me |
Safecracker Sartet lies comatose in the hospital, so his goons kindnap the heavily pregnant wife of trainee nurse Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), forcing him to revive Sartet and get him out of the hospital, with some dodgy police hot on their tail. It’s a simple formula, certainly, but made all the more fun by a brilliantly executed chase scene through the Parisian Metro and some twists you won’t see coming. Lellouche is believable as the unfortunate lynchpin to the whole mystery, but Elena Anaya, as wife Nadia, is given scant time to muster up any sympathy from the audience. Add to this an unfortunately neat ending, and the corniest translated dialogue care of somebody who used a dictionary from 1984, and you’ve got the crème brûlée of French thrillers – fun to crack into, but then just loads of vanilla cream.
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