Rarely has a movie been so crisply photographed and paced with robust urgency, and yet so… angered me. Point Blank is proof that French movies can be just as dumb as harebrained American thrillers. I am a sucker for Race Against the Clock thrillers, but this one really insulted my intelligence. The two opening developments are genuinely intriguing: one man chased by two hitmen culminating in getting hit by a car but survives at the hospital, and a male nurse who tends to him only to be extorted by bad guys who want their target turned over to them. The nurse (Giles Lellouche) has to seize and shepherd criminal Hugo (Roschdy Zem) over to the villains if he ever wants to see his pregnant wife (Elena Anaya) again. I was with the movie, felt sublime under its spell of excitement, then it just lost me.
It makes enough plausible sense that Lellouche is willing to commandeer a gun from an officer for the first time if it means hurrying along to turn over Hugo before the clock strikes noon. Hugo is on a wheelie hospital bed but just conscious and mobile enough to stand on his own feet. Perhaps it is plausible enough that maybe Hugo wants to exit from the hospital, too. Hugo can definitely ditch Lellouche on the outside, I mean really, an inexperienced nurse with a gun for the first time? Maybe best if they talk to each other to explain who might be after them and why. Cops are on their trail, too, but one squad is corrupt – they are united with the villains! It’s a web of political conspiracy! A videotape that will implicate and expose all could have been destroyed instead of being locked in “keepsake.”
This is one of those movies where alliances between sides could be made if they would just speak up and explain themselves in ten words or less. I yelled at the screen when our beloved third trimester pregnant woman is roughed and dragged around by a corrupt policewoman – it didn’t seem way too abusive to the other police squads to notice? What happened with this project was that they got a great plot scenario idea but the filmmakers’ hastiness and inflexible pride got in the way. They should have trusted five or six script readers to offer honest opinions of what worked and didn’t work before they filmed it. Put it through another draft or two to get this story right instead of filming a flawed screenplay. Gosh god @#!*% , it might very well have been a good movie after some honest corrections.
In French with English subtitles. Not to be confused with the 1967 non-linear storyline thriller “Point Blank” by director John Boorman.
90 Minutes. Rated R.
FOREIGN / RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK THRILLER / FRIDAY NIGHT THRILL RIDE
Film Cousins: “Commando” (1985); Nick of Time” (1995); “Taken” (2008); “The Chaser” (2010, South Korea).
