Mea Culpa.

To be fair this latest outing from Fred Cavaye is the standard fodder we have come to expect from this French director/writer following such movies as Point Blank (2010) and Anything for Her (2008). We either get stubble laden Vincent Lindon (Bastards 2013, Mademoiselle Chambon 2009) or stubble laded Gilles Lellouche (Little White Lies 2010, Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec 2010) in his latest movie Mea Culpa (2014) we get both actors i.e. double the stubble! Then add a beautiful lead actress Nadine Labaki (Caramel 2007), lots of leather jackets, guns, high speed chases and violence and some really mean looking East European gangsters who do more killing than talking. If you have been following Olivier Marchal’s French TV series Braquo you’ll know exactly what I mean!

Fast, gritty, with lots of graphic violence for violence sake and totally unbelievable were both the good guys and the bad guys are equally thuggish and prepared to kill their fellow human beings at the drop of a hat.  Lindon plays Simon an ex policeman following a drunken driving incident where three people including a young child are killed. Separated from wife Alice (Labaki) and young son Theo he now works for a security company but is still friends with Franck (Lellouche) who is still in the force. Bringing the action back up to date the East European gangsters are driving around Toulon bumping off various low lifes in their sordid drug-dealing world. While at a bullfight, yes that’s right a bullfight, with his mum and her man Simon’s son Theo witnesses our Serbian gangster’s dispensing of a chap in the gents toilet, they see him and give chase.  You’ve probable guest by now that the rest of the film involves Simon and his ex cop partner trying to stop his son being killed and you would not be far wrong!  A film for lads of both sexes!

 

Point Blank

Never a dull moment!

After making three award winning short films writer and director Fred Cavaye ventured into feature film making with the French thriller Anything for Her (2008) it starred Vincent Lindon a modern French Bogart and the German actress Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds 2009). This tense and entertaining film tells the story of a happily married couple, Lindon and Krugar, who lead a normal life with their young son Oscar. Their lives are turned upside down when completely out of the blue the police come to arrest Krugar for the brutal murder of her boss. Found guilty, she is sentenced to 20 years in prison. Her husband makes it his mission to prove her innocence and will stop at nothing to get her out of jail.  The film depicts the French authorities and the police force as inefficient and uncaring. Nominated for a Cesar, the French equivalent of the Academy Awards, for Best First Film. It was however unsuccessfully remade in the US as The Next Three Days (2010) by Paul Haggis.

Sartet gives his orders.

Cavaye’s latest and second feature film Point Blank (À bout portant) (2010)

stars Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Gerard Lanvin and Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live In 2011).  Lellouche plays Samuel, a trainee nurse working at a hospital who goes to help a patient when an intruder cuts his breathing tubes. Following on from this incident his pregnant wife (Anaya) is abducted from their home and during the confrontation Samuel is knocked unconscious. When he come’s too he discovers that a dangerous criminal named Sartet (Zem) is responsible, and if he's ever to see his wife again, he must do Sartet’s bidding. Samuel quickly finds himself pitted against rival gangsters and trigger-happy police in a deadly race to save the lives of his wife and unborn child.

Questioned by the Police?

As with Anything for Her the main character is an ordinary family man who gets embroiled in a situation well beyond his control. The film contains all the normal clichés for this type of genre but is done with great skill, never squandering a moment of its 84-minute running time. A breathlessly exciting thriller with an intelligent script and believable acting from all involved and like Cavaye’s debut you can almost smell the sweat and the fear. Will Samuel rescue his pregnant wife from the clutches of the evil villains and therefore save the life of the unborn baby? Go see the film to find out, you won’t be disappointed.