|
Bastille Day
| Released |
22 April 2016 |
| Director |
James Watkins |
Starring
|
Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Kelly Reilly, Charlotte Le Bon, Alexander Cooper, Anatol Yusef, Karl Ferrer, Jose Garcia |
| Writer(s) |
Andrew Baldwin |
Producer(s)
|
Bard Dorros, Fabrice Gianfermi, Steve Golin, David Kanter, Philippe Rousselet |
| Origin |
France, United States |
| Running Time |
92 minutes |
| Genre |
Action |
| Rating |
15A |
|
|
Beaucoup de fromage.
Ok, so let’s get this out of the way; Idris Elba is a very cool guy. It would be extremely difficult to put Stringer Bell/John Luther/DJ Big Driis on screen without him looking like the coolest guy in the room. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what else does Bastille Day have going for it? Well, not much as it turns out.
Michael Mason (Richard Madden) is a ne’er do well American in Paris, making ends meet by picking the pockets of the capital’s tourists. One evening he steals the handbag of a young woman (Charlotte Le Bon) he sees leaving an office block. Finding nothing of value in her bag, he dumps it; seconds later the bag explodes killing several bystanders and making Michael the number one suspect in a terror attack. CIA agents Karen Dacre (Kelly Reilly) and Sean Briar (Elba) are soon on his trail. Can Michael persuade them of his innocence before time runs out?
What follows is an occasionally entertaining but generic Euro-thriller that has more in common with the cliche-ticking of Taken than the kick-ass excitement of Bourne. By tapping into the current terror climate and the rise of the right in Europe, director James Watkins (Eden Lake, The Woman in Black), has hit upon the zeitgeist but this political climate is ultimately only a colourful backdrop for a story about corrupt cops that we have seen a thousand times before. Elba may be one of the most captivating screen presences working at the moment but the same cannot be said of the underwhelming Madden, who seems out of place here. The excellent Kelly Reilly meanwhile is tragically underused.
All in all, Bastille Day is a forgettable thriller that fails to bring anything new to the genre save from the hulking physicality of its star.
- Linda O’Brien |
