Gilles Lellouche and Gérard Lanvin in POINT BLANK, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

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Gilles Lellouche and Gérard Lanvin in POINT BLANK on buzzine.com

FILM REVIEW: ‘POINT BLANK’

Director Fred Cavayé Delivers Frantic Nonstop Action That Starts Early and Never Lets Up

By: Parimal M. Rohit
July 24, 2011

Point Blank on buzzine.com(Magnolia Pictures) Not to be confused with its 1967 John Boorman film starring Lee Marvin or the 1998 Matt Earl Beesley film with Mickey Rourke and Danny Trejo, Frenchman Fred Cavayé’s Point Blank is neither a taut thriller nor some cheesy straight-to-DVD concoction. Instead, the 2011 Tribeca International Film Festival selection is a hard-hitting action movie perfectly crafted for adrenaline junkies who enjoy fast-paced storylines with a simple plot holding everything together.

 
Starring a well-cast lot of French actors -- Gilles Lellouche (Samuel), Roschdy Zem (Sartet), Elena Anaya (Nadia), and Gérard Lanvin (Commander Werner) -- Point Blank presses pedal to metal from the very moment the film’s establishing shot illuminates the big screen.
 
In that first scene, assassin and gangster Sartet (Zem) is seen crashing his injured body into a wall as he tries to escape a pair of lackeys. A frantic foot chase ensues, with Sartet’s escape coming to an abrupt end in a street tunnel, where he is pummeled by a speeding motorcycle and flung several hundred feet down the road.
 
The quick chain of events and near morbid results set up the remainder of the film, which involves a budding male nurse (Samuel), his pregnant wife (Nadia), and a corrupt high-ranking detective (Werner). As Sartet survives his near-death collision, one thing leads to another and Samuel is forced to help the villainous assassin not only escape but clear his name, all while bringing down his biggest nemesis, Werner. Samuel is motivated to help out since one of Sartet’s many treacherous contacts kidnapped Nadia.
 
Most of what you need to know about Point Blank happens early. Cavayé hides very little from the audience. The twists and turns reveal themselves before the film is even halfway over, so do not expect much mystery or sudden unexpected reveals. All that happens within the first 45 minutes of the film.
 
Accordingly, Point Blank is best described as a race-against-time action flick centering around an everyday man who suddenly gets thrown into a scrupulously hairy situation where he is nothing more than a pawn in a high-stakes game of chess...except this pawn managed to sneak all the way to the other side and convert into a queen, allowing him to take control of the board and regain his life.
 
Indeed, Samuel is that pawn, and Point Blank is ultimately about how his life turned topsy-turvy all because some guy he has no connection with gets run over by a motorcycle. Everyone else in the film -- the pregnant wife, the corrupt detective, the subordinate police officers, the lackeys, even the annoying supervising doctor -- all play a very distinct role of facilitating Samuel’s journey.
 
With that, it is best to keep your eyes and mind fixated on Samuel throughout the film. Point Blank is all about him and his desire to save his expectant wife at any expense. Indeed, Samuel’s loving desperation to save his wife, not the intricate web of lies and criminal entanglement of which he is caught in, is the film’s driving force.
 
To think too much about the film’s other credits is to give Point Blank more credit than it deserves. End of the day, Point Blank is an entertaining action flick that is best viewed as a fun roller coaster ride through Paris’s nitty gritty streets, buildings, and subways. Indeed, the action keeps the film moving at a brisk pace, and the end credits come up rather quickly. When it comes to plot, there is very little to be had for critical thinking and over-analysis.
 
As for acting performances, just about everyone plays their respective parts exactly how they are to be played. Lellouche is very easy to root for and does a fine job of depicting the everyday man who has to figure out, on the fly, how to get out of his unpredicted mess.
 
Portraying the silent killer, Zem is beyond serviceable and is actually rather believable. While no one in the audience will really fear Sartet, Zem’s rendition of the criminal mind not only gets the job done, but he also positions the character to be the perfect tool for Samuel to save his wife and see her to the delivery room.
 
Lanvin is equally believable as the corrupt lead detective -- the veteran French actor portraying another character facilitating the unraveling of Point Blank’s simple storyline. Just the same, Anaya is as easy to root for as Nadia, as Lellouche was in his rendition of Samuel.
 
Point Blank is a fun action film with plenty of climactic highs when it comes to foot chases and intense combative moments and skirmishes. The plot is light and merely a device to facilitate all the action sequences being stringed together in a plausible, logical format.
 
Co-written by Cavayé and Guillaume Lemans, Magnolia Pictures’ 'Point Blank' opens in the United States on July 29, 2011. It released in France on December 1, 2010. The film is in French with English subtitles.