Bastille Day **½ (2016, Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Kelly Reilly) – Movie Review

Idris Elba stars as a loose-cannon CIA agent who races through Paris to arrest an American pickpocket and forces him to join his anti-terrorist mission to foil an evil bomb plot.

The pickpocket (Richard Madden) is a charming, witty, smooth-talking twenty-something who has made the mistake of lifting a young woman’s bag, whose contents include a teddy bear containing a bomb, which he chucks away in the street garbage, killing four people. This is one of the film’s more credible plot points.

Neither the pickpocket nor the would-be bomber (Charlotte Le Bon) are morally compromised but actually technically guilty of any too much as he didn’t know about the bomb and she was supposed to plant the bomb by night in an empty office building but chickens out when the cleaning staff turns up. She doesn’t mind a fair bit of bombing but doesn’t fancy killing people.

This movie really takes the idea that morals are for other people, and gleefully sets its story in a city that has been devastated by bombs and is under red alert for terrorism. If you are to enjoy Bastille Day, you have to put that on one side, on the permanent back burner. Bastille Day is an old-style action thriller, where ethics and credibility are nothing compared to thrills and spills. These it does deliver, and quite excitingly. We may have seen it all before – the rooftop chase from Bourne and Bond – but it’s good to see it again, if it’s as well staged as this.

Despite dodgy American accents, Elba and Madden do well by their odd couple mismatched buddy antics, relishing their dumb but often funny banter, as well as their dumb but often exciting action. Why couldn’t Elba have been an MI6 agent and Madden a Scottish pickpocket in Paris? The plot becomes increasingly daft and eventually nonsensical, but British director James Watkins [Eden Lake (2008), The Woman in Black (2012)] moves it along fast and furious, and keeps a short movie (92 minutes) so totally involving, engrossing and entertaining that you hardly have a moment to think what exploitative nonsense it all is.

Also battling a dodgy American accent, Kelly Reilly is wasted and unhappy looking as CIA boss Karen Dacre. As you may realise from the Brit personnel, this is a British action movie aping the American Bourne movies and France’s Taken. As such, it’s an also ran, but it does still race to the finishing line. It’s quite good, disreputable buddy action flick fun.

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review derekwinnert.com