Point Blank review

From its explosive opening, Anything for Her director Fred Cavayé’s latest doesn’t let up. A nursing assistant, Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), has to help an injured man, Sartet (Roschdy Zem), escape from under police watch in hospital when Samuel’s heavily pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya, most recently seen in Julio Medem’s Room in Rome) is kidnapped. A shocking murder sends Samuel on the run, suddenly a target for competing forces, much like the protagonist in Guillaume Canet’s memorable 2006 thriller Tell No One.

Cavayé and Canet are at the forefront of the sort of Hollywoodisation of the French film industry practiced by Luc Besson since his 1985 outing, Subway all the way through to his Taxi franchise and 2008’s Taken, on which he was an uncredited producer. Appropriately, one of Point Blank’s key set pieces takes place in the Paris underground; topped and tailed with hospital scenes, you may even be reminded of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, without the formidable gunplay.

Amid many audacious scenes, Lellouche looks like a soppy rugby player while Zem is shiningly charismatic; there’s some great casting among the police, too, which seems much more easily racially representative than English-language films where black characters can be second string. Claire Perot is particularly noticeable as a Lisbeth Salander-type among the many strong female leads on the force for fans to admire, though there’s a very odd subtext about maternal feelings among women officers.

Nonsensical set-up aside, Cavayé’s only false step is an overeagerness to tie up loose ends with a sentimentality that may play less well for an Anglophone audience. As long as that finale doesn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth, the greatest compliment you can pay Point Blank is that it not only matches Hollywood’s best thrillers, it outstrips them. It’s that good.