Could also be called The Running, Jumping, and Never Standing Still Film. Taken director Pierre Morel’s debut, under the aegis of the ubiquitous Luc Besson, is a splendidly pithy cavalry charge of a movie, churning together a fashionable urban multiculti vibe, parkour athleticism, and Republic serial pace into a pâté that’s over just as soon as it needs to be. Like Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, Neil Marshall’s Doomsday, and some other recent films tackling dystopian vision, it constructs a reactionary, assailed future Europe trying to suppress waves of disaffection and considering violent sterlisation of the whole lot. It could almost be Besson’s shot back too at the hermetic guardians of high culture who constantly berate his vision of international cinema.
Not long from now, the slum areas of Paris
Six months later heroic undercover agent Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli), having busted another kingpin, is assigned to infiltrate B13 and recover a stolen nuclear warhead, and he has to make friends with Leïto to pull it off. The film kills off its baddie too casually, and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but never mind, this is modern action cinema at its most lively and graceful, and mixes up its unabashedly rowdy, violent, anti-authoritarian bent with some on-the-fly social relevance and key characters who are actually likable.
Rollerball (1975): Timeless Sci-Fi Classic