★★½
“Shaky, in a number of ways.”
Alma Siracine (Vacth) was a black ops agent for the French government, until an assignment in Syria went pear-shaped, and she resigned her position. Seven years later, she’s living quietly with her policeman husband in Morocco, until he’s the victim of a drive-by shooting. She finds the attackers and terminates them. Unfortunately, they are the sons of local arms dealer Manour Khoury (Dazi). Not helping, he is under the protection of the French government, being allowed to operate in exchange for funneling information to them about terrorist attacks. Spymaster Joanna Walter (Bercot) decides Alma is a loose end in need of tidying. Alma, naturally, is of a different opinion, and won’t be easy to clean up.
The main problem here is de Fontenay’s fondness for shakycam in the action sequences. Not just one or two. It feels like every time anyone moves at a pace quicker a walk, the camera immediately starts to have some kind of seizure. It’s clearly a tactic designed to instill a sense of immediacy. Paul Greengrass used it to great effect in the Bourne movies. But it isn’t just a case of taking a handheld camera and waving it around. You need an editor who can assemble the footage into a coherent format. Sadly, that’s what is absent here, and the results are usually difficult to follow, and on occasion liable to induce a headache.
Consequently, I found myself almost dreading the appearance of an action sequence. Not exactly a good thing to experience during an action movie. Whether it was her brutally efficient dispatch of Khoury’s sons, a motorcycle chase through the streets of the seaside town where she lives, or the final battle with Khoury’s men at the port in Casablanca, the approach is the same. It feels like a throwback – and a most unwelcome one at that – to the style of action cinema popular twenty years ago. I thought we had moved on. Apparently not. The film is (literally) on more solid ground when depicting the murky world of international espionage, where pragmatic decisions are made without consideration of the moral concerns. I actually have some sympathy for Walter and her almost impossible situation.
Outside of the camerawork, the technical elements are generally fine. The film makes decent use of its Moroccan and Middle East locations, and Dazi makes for a decent villain, believing himself untouchable, regardless of what he does. However, the overall structure feels off in some way, and the film just seems to end in a way likely to provoke a “Well, that happened” reaction in the viewer. Vacth has some effective moments, and the film never totally lost my attention. But it did teeter on the edge more than once, especially when it made me feel like I had contracted an inner-ear disorder. Those with a stronger stomach than I might find more to enjoy here. Wouldn’t necessarily bet on it though.
Dir: Guillaume de Fontenay
Star: Marine Vacth, Emmanuelle Bercot, Slimane Dazi, Niels Schneider
a.k.a. Badh