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★★☆☆☆
18 April 2016
A movie review of BASTILLE DAY. |
“Welcome to Paris,” Karen Dacre (Kelly Reilly)
Idris Elba is better than this naff sub-1980s throwback action thriller, which tries to recapture the lean no-nonsense excitement of DIE HARD, 48 HOURS and MIDNIGHT RUN. Surprisingly inept filmmaking comes from director James Watkins, who made one of modern cinema’s top horror movies, THE WOMAN IN BLACK. Shaking the camera so you cannot see what is unfolding, and then editing fast to make doubly sure, marks his lack of confidence in combat choreography. In the age of THE RAID and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, surely we now live in a world where that incompetent style is no longer on the roster?
Idris Elba is better than this naff sub-1980s throwback action thriller, which tries to recapture the lean no-nonsense excitement of DIE HARD, 48 HOURS and MIDNIGHT RUN. Surprisingly inept filmmaking comes from director James Watkins, who made one of modern cinema’s top horror movies, THE WOMAN IN BLACK. Shaking the camera so you cannot see what is unfolding, and then editing fast to make doubly sure, marks his lack of confidence in combat choreography. In the age of THE RAID and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, surely we now live in a world where that incompetent style is no longer on the roster?
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Elba needs no proof of his acting qualities over various mediums, from television shows THE WIRE and LUTHER, to theatre, Neil LaBute’s THIS IS HOW IT GOES, and the silver screen, BEASTS OF NO NATION and 28 WEEKS LATER. It is a shame then that mainstream entertainment cinema results have been so poor as not to break him out (PACIFIC RIM, PROMETHEUS). BASTILLE DAY is distinctly lacklustre.
Why make it the C.I.A. if you are going to cast entirely Brits? Why not M.I.6? The poor American accents constantly grate. Of course Sean Briar (Idris Elba) is a not-play-by-the-rules butt-heads-with-superiors agent. One thought that that law enforcement cliché was expunged in LAST ACTION HERO? The phrase “off the reservation” is unironically trotted out. We first meet Briar getting a dressing down from senior, Tom Luddy (Anatol Yusef). Actually the opening scene is some gratuitous female nudity, as a lady walks down steps while pickpocket Michael Mason (Richard Madden – also with a terrible American lilt) steals from tourists. But he is a thief with a heart, because he gives what looks to be a coin to a homeless person. Lazy characterisation is different to economic characterisation.
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Meanwhile Zoe Naville (Charlotte Le Bon) is going to leave a bomb at the right wing French Nationalist Party headquarters, but changes mind after seeing some cleaners. Mason spies her and steals her bag not realising it contains an explosive stuffed in a teddy bear and inadvertently discards it by a bin, where it blows up killing and maiming. Briar ends up recruiting Mason to help him prevent more bombings. There are machinations amidst the chases and fisticuffs in Paris. The villains are the only thing that mildly elevates. Even that is undermined, by the baddies trying to whip up riots, to shield their movements, by clunkily using social media, “The hashtags will tip it over.” (The script is leaden and therefore one cannot tell if such a line is intentionally hilarious.)
Weirdly, there seems to be no adverse consequences for Zoe and Michael. Is this socio-political commentary?
A film so schlocky, one was shocked to find it not produced by Luc Besson (whose brand of C-list action projects seems to have no end. When THE TRANSPORTER is remade/rebooted/whatever, cinema is bottoming out.)
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