Point Blank

3/4

Starring: Gilles Lellouche, Roschdy Zem, Elena Anaya, Gerard Lanvin

Rated R for Strong Violence and Some Language

“Point Blank” is essentially one long chase movie.  Take “North by Northwest” and mix it with “Run Lola Run,” and you’ll have some idea of what this movie is like (although it is just one storyline, not various outcomes of a single event).  Director Fred Cavaye keeps the tension high from beginning to end.  It’s fast, furiously paced, with an aggressive score.  What more can you ask for?

Samuel (Lellouche) is a nursing trainee who is eagerly awaiting the birth of his daughter with his wife, Nadia (Anaya).  One night he sees something strange.  A doctor has taken a critically injured patient off of his ventilator.  Samuel doesn’t catch the man, but he does save the patient’s life, and like any good citizen, he does the right thing by calling the police.  The next morning, he is attacked and Nadia is kidnapped.  A phone call tells him that he must get the patient, a career thief named Sartet (Zem), out of the building in the next three hours or his wife (and unborn child) are dead.  Now, he and Sartet must rely on each other to stay alive amidst some very nasty criminals.

Although Hitchcock and Tykwer’s films describe the plot and energy, the film also brought to mind Pierre Morel’s “From Paris With Love.”  Both films exist on a totally superficial level, but they still manage to crank up the suspense.  Not an easy feat.

The acting is solid, but because of the film’s style, character development is minimal.  Gilles Lellouche makes for a sympathetic hero.  It’s clear that he’s completely out of his element as a wrongly accused criminal, but he is desperate and willing to do anything to get his wife back.  Roschdy Zem is also interesting as the thief who may not be as bad as he seems.  Both of them want the same thing, and that reliance upon each other makes for an interesting relationship.  No one else leaves much of an impression, mainly because they don’t have much time.

That’s actually the problem.  Fred Cavaye keeps the pacing so frantic that there’s no room for character development.  The actors do what they can to create personalities with what they are given, but there’s never any time to get a handle on them.  Cavaye keeps the characters at such a distance that there were times I was confused about who was who (one character in particular has no clear purpose).

Still, Cavaye should be commended for creating a movie with this much tension, and being able to sustain it for so long.