Review of Point Blank (2010) by Van R — 16 Jan 2012

No, Gallic director Fred Cavayé's pulsating, adrenaline-laced nail biter "Point Blank" has nothing in common with director John Boorman's 1967 gangland thriller "Point Blank" with Lee Marvin. Instead, this 84-minute melodrama resembles one of British director Alfred Hitchcock's wrongly-accused innocent man on-the-run suspense sagas. Cavaye and scenarist Guillaume Lemans have assembled with aplomb all the standard elements of a taut, top-notch thriller, and the suspense only slackens in the final few minutes when the filmmakers knot together the loose threads. Corrupt cops, innocent bystanders, betrayed criminals and a pregnant woman-in-jeopardy fuel this breathless, pared-down plot that careens from one improbable scene to the next with feverish abandon. Basically, this is the kind of actioneer that you hate to put on pause for a bladder break. Cavayé's chief claim to fame is another French thriller "Anything for Her" which was remade for American audiences as "The Next Three Days" with Russell Crowe. Clearly, spousal fidelity is a recurring theme in Cavayé's work.

"Point Blank" wastes no time with preliminaries as a wounded safecracker, Hugo Sartet (Roschdy Zem), scrambles out of a high-rise building with a pair of pistol-toting thugs at his heels. Hugo calls his accomplice to pick him up, but he never reaches the rendezvous because a motorcyclist collides with him the moment that the two gunmen are poised to perforate him. Hugo lands in the hospital but he isn't there long before a killer in a doctor's coat pulls the plug on his respirator. The safecracker would have died had a conscientious fellow, Samuel (Gilles Lellouche), a nurse-in-training spots the killer on the way out the door and saves Hugo from certain death. Samuel is a sympathetic hero who has a wife, Nadia (Elena Anaya), who has about a month to go on her pregnancy. The couple know that she is going to deliver a baby girl and the hospital has warned Nadia to keep herself in bed. Anyway, after Samuel saves Hugo's life, he heads home feeling triumphant. No sooner has he started to fix Nadia and he a meal than gunmen burst in on him, club him unconscious, and kidnap his wife. When he regains consciousness, Samuel listens to the ultimatum that the villains give him. He must help Hugo escape from the hospital. Naturally, some things are never easy and Samuel finds himself behaving like an action hero.

Samuel spirits Hugo out of the hospital and in the process narrowly eludes a squad of French cops coming in the door. Later, we learn that Hugo is a suspect in the murder of a wealthy French industrialist Francis Meyer. Complicating everything is a tough-as-nails French detective, Commandant Patrick Werner (Gérard Lanvin), who is investigating the death of Meyer. As it turns out, everything is not as it seems. Hugo was trying to break into Meyer's safe late at night when he saw the Meyer had been killed. The two thugs pursuing him on foot had planned to kill him and pin Meyer's murder on him. Werner is a corrupt cop who shot Meyer and the evidence is on a thumb drive that he is keeping in his office. Hugo and Samuel team up to track down Samuel and retrieve the incriminating thumb drive. At the same time, Samuel is determined to rescue his wife from corrupt cops with a qualm. They threaten to push poor Nadia out of a window and claim that she wanted to commit suicide. Before Hugo and Samuel can obtain the thumb drive, they have to distract the police so that they can get into police headquarters and ransack Werner's office. Hugo calls in a favor from an underground big-wig who dispatches scores of punks to commit crimes that will have the police leaving their offices to make multiple arrest.

"Point Blank" is an exciting, suspenseful, crime thriller with a positive ending.