BASTILLE DAY (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

bastille day (2016) movie

Genre               |   Action Thriller

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   92 minutes

Released         |   12 May 2016

cast

Idris Elba ... Sean Briar
Richard Madden ... Michael Mason
José Garcia ... Victor Gamieux
​Kelly Reilly ... Karen Dacre
Charlotte Le Bon ... Zoe

director

​James Watkins

writer

​Andrew Baldwin ... (written by) &
James Watkins ... (written by)

cinematographer

Tim Maurice-Jones

music

​Alex Heffes

film editor

​Jon Harris

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box office result

Worldwide             $14,807,539​ ​

Australia                 $​​​​​369,211

North America        $​ 50,269

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the best dialogue

Sean Briar: You ran. Innocent people don't run.
Michael Mason: Have you seen yourself? You'd run, too.​

Michael Mason: I don't work for the CIA.
Sean Briar: You do today.

Sean Briar: I should've shot you in the face.

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BASTILLE DAY (2016) IMAGES

BASTILLE DAY (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Michael Mason, a pick-pocket living in Paris steals a bag with a teddy bear in it. Not realizing the toy contains a timed bomb, he tosses it aside on a busy street. A few seconds later it explodes, killing four people. CCTV footage reveals Masons face and the French police tag him as a terrorist threat. The explosion, although botched, was set up by a select group of the French Interior Ministry as a decoy so they can make a half billion dollar digital transfer from a bank, (closed on French National Day) -hence the title Bastille Day. In a separate CIA investigation the unruly agent Sean Briar, discovers the real story behind Masons "terrorist attack". The two men, on different sides of the law, collaborate to bring the corrupt members of the Ministry down.

BASTILLE DAY (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 5 May 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

English Writer/Director James Watkins has taken an impressive leap from the Horror genre into mainstream, action movie-making with BASTILLE DAY, his new film starring Idris Elba. The coolest man in movies is joined on-screen by the likeable Richard Madden, who came to prominence with his turn as Robb Stark in GAME OF THRONES. While Watkins' move into the Action genre is not without some problems, there is a tone and style that compensates for any story or technical shortfalls that exist. BASTILLE DAY feels like it could have very easily existed back in the 1970s or 1980s alongside films like Joseph Sargent’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE or Roman Polanski’s FRANTIC, mixing a crime-within-a-crime story that takes place in Paris on Bastille Day eve.

The films opens with a wonderful shot of Sacre-Coeur, the beautiful Basilica perched atop Montmartre in the heart of the French capital. The attention of tourists and locals is caught by a young woman who has stripped down naked and is descending the landmarks famous stairs, attracting a huge amount of interest along the way. Unbeknown to the hundreds of onlookers, Michael Mason (Richard Madden), a young American man, moves through the crowd pick-pocketing as many people as he can while their attention is diverted by the young woman. This is Mason’s stock-in-trade routine. Create a diversion and go to work. Elsewhere, CIA operative Sean Briar (Idris Elba) reluctantly takes on an assignment for the Paris CIA surveillance operation. Briar has a history of trouble and he is at immediate loggerheads with the local station chief Tom Luddy (Anatol Yusef). Only Briar’s relationship with senior CIA official Karen Dacre (Kelly Reilly) prevents Luddy from booting Briar out of the field office on his first day.

Watkins, who shares screenplay credit with Andrew Baldwin, quickly establishes Mason and Briar as two misfits who are extremely good at what they do. Fate brings the pair together when Mason mistakenly steals a bag that contains a homemade bomb intended to go off late at night in an office occupied by a local political party. Things don’t go as planned and when the bomb’s delivery stooge Zoe Naville (Charlotte Le Bon) is interrupted by cleaners, loses her nerve and flees into the Paris night. A short time later, Mason sees Zoe and her bag sitting not far from him. Deciding she’s an easy mark, he is quick to act, stealing the bag and its belongings. Zoe is beside herself at the theft and calls her boyfriend to tell him that the bag with the bomb has been stolen. Her boyfriend’s boss Rafi Bertrand (Thierry Godard) is not impressed and he and his team of would-be terrorists set off into the night to find Zoe. Matters turn deadly when Mason, unwittingly, throws the back away just before its contents detonate. He gets far enough away not to be injured when the bomb explodes, but four people who are close by aren’t so lucky.

The CIA quickly work out, by way of surveillance footage, that Mason had the bag with the bomb and Briar is quick to volunteer to pull Mason off the street. Dacre agrees, but she tells him to keep it low-key and to stay out of the way of local law enforcement. Those famous last words are the starting point for the film to dramatically ramp up the action quota, as Briar hits the streets of Paris in search of his suspect. Watkins does an impressive job through this mid-section of the story at balancing the action with plot and there are multiple chase sequences between the various characters as the film’s screenplay pulls together its various threads.

BASTILLE DAY is a very physical film, with a great deal of stunt work captured at close range. Watkins sensibly re-teamed with Tim Maurice-Jones, who was director of photography with him on THE WOMAN IN BLACK. Maurice-Jones captures the action in particular style and those who have seen other films he has shot, such as SNATCH and LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, will understand the visual dynamic he brings to his latest collaboration with Watkins. While it’s not the greatest film the genre has ever produced, BASTILLE DAY is a well-polished action thriller that has a unique tone, a solid story and a very good cast headlined by the always-cool Idris Elba. It’s well and truly worth the trip to the cinema if for no other reason than the great shots of Paris featured throughout the film!

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