Rating:  

Starring: Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Gérard Lanvin, Elena Anaya, Mireille Perrier, Claire Pérot, Brice Fournier, Moussa Maaskri, Pierre Benoist, Valérie Dashwood, Virgile Bramly, Nicky Naude.
__________________________

Director: Fred Cavayé
Rating: R
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Release Date: July 29, 2011
Home Video Release Date: December 6, 2011
Box Office: $708 Thousand
___________________________

LGM Films, Gaumont, TF1 Films Production, K.R. Productions, Nexus Factory, uFilm, Canal+, TPS Star, and Magnolia Pictures.

Written by: Fred Cavayé and Guillaume Lemans.

The tension hits you right after a brief silent series of opening titles. A man, clutching his side, bursts through a door down an outdoor staircase and breaks into a sprint. Two men wielding pistols chase after him. Although we cannot contextualize who these people are, we are brought to attention by the confusion of it all. As the man keeps ahead of his pursuers, a turn into an underpass proves costly for the man, not because his wannabe assailants catch up to him, but because he is blindsided by a passing vehicle and knocked unconscious.

Cut to a hospital, where this man is a patient and comatose, but alive. One nurse, Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) is going through his rounds and has checked on the man known as Hugo Sartet (Roschdy Zem). Late at night, Samuel notices a strange man, clad in a doctor’s white jacket, entering into Sartet’s room and quickly departing, as Sartet’s vitals take a dangerous and alarming plunge. Racing into the room, Samuel sees that Sartet’s respirator has been removed and he immediately reconnects the apparatus, saving his patient’s life. After reporting the incident to the hospital and the police, he later returns home to discover his wife, nearly 9 months pregnant, has been kidnapped. Then, a cell phone call comes through to Samuel, stating that if he ever wants to see his wife alive again, as well as his unborn child, Sartet must be safely removed from the hospital and delivered to a secret location at a certain time. One false move and his wife is gone forever.

From France, Point Blank is a terrific little thriller about a man, desperate to save his wife, nearly 9 months pregnant, from a kidnapping by some ruthless criminals. How the man’s wife becomes caught up in a criminal plot is an intricately told tale which incorporates a good deed being fettered upon perhaps the wrong person, rivalry and corruption amongst warring police teams, and a mix of bad guys with shifting loyalties all circling around like vultures with an everyman husband burdened with processing and dealing with all of it.

The second feature film by Fred Cavayé, Point Blank delivers 84 pulse-pounding minutes, taking detours and diversions that are unpredictable and surprising. After the thrilling opening sequence, the film gulps in a fair amount of air before exhaling a layered and involving story that itemizes the motivations of the good guy forced to go bad, the ice cold criminal who is caught in the riptide of assisting the man who saved him and fighting off another band of criminals who want him dead. And intriguingly, a third level of Point Blank deals with police betrayal, competitiveness, and corruption, heightened by the tension between teams led by grizzled old veteran, Commandant Werner (Gérard Lenvin), a man who gets “all the cases”, and the upstart and motivated female Commandant Fabre (Mireille Perrier), who wants a shot at the higher profile cases that Werner is given almost automatically.

Ambitious as anything, Point Blank may gloss over some of the more intriguing plot elements like that pesky police rivalry scenario or the rather abrupt and brutal dispatching of a villain that Sartet only briefly introduces to us, but there is so much to take in and enjoy that you will simply want the action to continue, know where Point Blank is going, and wonder if Samuel will actually reunite with Nadia. With stunning blasts of violence, a memorable 12-15 minute chase scene on foot in and around the streets of Paris, Point Blank delivers a nice adrenalin rush that many Hollywood/American-made films simply lack or underestimate. Point Blank is a nice surprise and I am adding Fred Cavayé to my list of directors to seek out and find, if, and when, his films make it stateside.

Should I See It?

Gripping from its opening moments, Point Blank is a smartly crafted, shot to the heart for virtually all of its abbreviated running time. Well-acted with intriguing subplots and shifting loyalties, Point Blank is comparable to the kettle on the stove just getting ready to whistle…that agitation and anticipation is where this film lives.

This might move too quick and people may find the hinting at deeper subplots, but never exploring them fully, a bit aggravating. Additionally, I can certainly understand if someone takes this in and has a complaint that they have seen it all before. You have, I would simply argue that you haven’t seen a chase/kidnapping film executed this well in a really long time.