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Over the previous few years, motion followers have been handled to a run of stable French programming on Netflix. Athena was probably the greatest motion pictures of 2022, Julien Leclercq’s Sentinelle is a stable darkish Olga Kurylenko thriller, Ganglands (and the film it was based mostly on, Braquers) are wonderful crime fare, and Misplaced Bullet and its sequel outdo even the Quick and Livid franchise in relation to explosive vehicular motion.
The newest entry on this burgeoning scene is AKA, a brand new Netflix pickup that stars Alban Lenoir as Adam Franco, a extremely expert special-ops agent confronted with one in all his most harmful assignments but. Franco is implanted undercover on the safety workforce of a infamous crime lord (notorious soccer legend Eric Cantona, a tricky man as soon as suspended from the game for kicking a fan). Franco makes a giant impression after shortly rendering the top of safety unconscious after a verbal spat, and he turns into the bodyguard for the crime lord’s bullied son, educating the kid the best way to combat and defend himself.
Picture: Nicolas Auproux/Netflix
It’s just about “Man on Hearth lite” — one other film that appears impressed by Philip Nicholson’s 1980 novel Man on Hearth. AKA isn’t an official adaptation of the ebook, like Élie Chouraqui’s 1987 French film model or Tony Scott’s stylized 2004 thriller. But it surely has rather a lot in widespread with them: It’s a darkish crime story a few grizzled operative bonding with a baby, and the lengths that operative will go when the kid is at risk. Whereas it lacks Scott’s directorial aptitude, AKA has one thing few different motion pictures have: Alban Lenoir.
Lenoir began his profession as a stunt performer, engaged on quite a lot of French productions and on Pierre Morel’s 2008 game-changer Taken. After a sequence of small elements, he bought his huge break in 2015’s French Blood, which screened at TIFF and noticed Lenoir nominated for a Lumières Award for Most Promising New Actor.
Just a few years after that got here Misplaced Bullet, a tightly contained vehicular thriller the place Lenoir performs Lino, a grasp mechanic and thief pulled right into a scheme by crooked cops and framed for homicide. With a purpose to show his innocence, he has to seek out the final remaining piece of proof from the crime — a single misplaced bullet.
Lenoir as Lino in Misplaced Bullet 2
Picture: Julien Goldstein/Netflix
Misplaced Bullet and Misplaced Bullet 2 are among the many finest motion motion pictures of the last decade, utilizing easy narratives to assemble elaborate, kinetic set items. The fistfights are brutal, the automotive chases are electrical (typically actually), and it’s a turbo-charged motion sequence harking back to the early Quick and Livid motion pictures.
However Lenoir is the key sauce to those film’s recipes. He all the time brings a peaceful, intense, grounded vitality to his roles, with a face that screams, “This man has been in a number of fights.” Lenoir strikes like an athlete and hits like a truck, and whereas he performs extremely succesful characters expert in violence, he imbues them with an Everyman vitality. His characters get hit loads, and are incessantly exhausted by the grueling fights they wind up in. In AKA, there’s a humorous scene the place Adam merely needs to take a nap, however retains getting interrupted by notifications and directions from his handler (who he communicates with via PlayStation voice chat, players).
Picture: Nicolas Auproux/Netflix
Picture: Netflix
Lenoir can be a author, and he co-wrote the screenplays for each Misplaced Bullet motion pictures and AKA. AKA sees him reuniting with director and co-writer Morgan S. Dalibert, the cinematographer on the Misplaced Bullet motion pictures. (The 2 additionally beforehand labored collectively on 2005’s New World, Dalibert’s directorial debut.) A number of the motion scenes stand out in AKA, notably a fancy brawl in a drug den and a combat outdoors a membership proven via CCTV. Dalibert additionally repeatedly frames motion in the back of lengthy, slender photographs, including depth to a few of the sequences, and he takes enjoyment of telegraphing objects that might be utilized in a combat — lingering on a hook on a wall to get viewers enthusiastic about how it will likely be brutally deployed.
AKA’s overarching narrative by no means actually gels — there’s an enormous conspiracy idea floating across the edges of the film, however it isn’t given sufficient time to actually come into focus. The film’s tempo additionally slows because it stops to provide some characters extra particular backstories, which is a disgrace, as a result of the actors have been already filling in a number of these gaps via their performances. Fortunately, Lenoir’s distinctive presence helps elevate the film to stable streaming fare.
AKA is at its finest when it showcases Alban Lenoir, Motion Star, somewhat than its personal standing as a much less trendy Man on Hearth. It’s nonetheless value watching when you’re within the new wave of French motion cinema, and one in all its most intriguing stars. However when you haven’t seen the Misplaced Bullet motion pictures but, undoubtedly prioritize these for wonderful Lenoir motion.
AKA is streaming on Netflix now.
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