In Netflix's POINT BLANK, Joe Lynch has smartly remade the crackerjack French thriller

Back in 2011 we were extremely impressed with a little French thriller called Point Blank, directed and co-written by Fred Cavayé. Now Netflix is releasing a very-close-to-the-original remake of this film, again titled POINT BLANK, and I am happy to say that it is almost in every way a comparable feat.

Considering the 1967 John Boorman film of the same title (but leaving out the not-so-hot Mickey Rourke bomb from 1998), it would seem that Point Blank movies are very much worth seeing.

The new film, with a screenplay adapted from M. Cavayé's original by Adam G. Simon, has been directed by one of my favorite action directors, Joe Lynch (pictured at right), a fellow about whom -- given his achievement with Everly and Mayhem -- it might be safe to say that nobody has given us a more gleeful array of over-the-top violence and anarchic bedlam.

Mr. Lynch tones down the gleeful here, if not the violence, as the story involves a very pregnant woman held hostage and even knocked around a bit more that might seem righteous or bearable.

The movie begins with a bang (several: yes, gunshots), as a figure crashes through a window and runs away pursued by others. Who's bad and who's good will not shake out for some time yet, and so much happens in the first few minutes without our quite knowing exactly what, why or even how, that we must simply take it all in and trust that an explanation is on offer.

It is, and it leads to a lot more violence, surprise and fun as a male nurse (Anthony Mackie, above, right) taking care of that initial run-away man (Frank Grillo, above left), who's now in hospital, is forced to get that man out of the hospital and away from the police before his own pregnant wife comes to harm.

To tell much more of the plot would create spoilers, so I'll just say that along the way we meet a hard-boiled policewoman (Marcia Gay Harden, above, left) and a bunch of cops, not all of them as devoted to "protect and serve" as you might prefer. The movie's most emotional performance, and the one that finally grounds it to some kind of reality is given by Christian Cooke (below), as the frightened, angry and helpful/helpless brother of the Grillo character, caught between rescuing his bro and doing the right thing.

The other crack performance comes from a character we meet only late in the movie, though we've been hearing about him -- Big D -- for most of the film. As played the very scary, funny and surprising Markice Moore (shown at bottom), Big D turns out to be a not unsophisticated movie lover sporting a jones for the work of William Friedkin. Seems to TrustMovies that Big D and his scenes are where the movie differs most from Cavayé's original. This, and the fact that the French version offered, even later in the game, a bit more welcome surprise about the identity of the good guys and the bad.

Otherwise both films are absolute delights of their hostage-thriller genre, offering plenty of action, fun, and sure, violence, betrayal and other assorted naughtiness. Lynch's pacing, as ever, proves on the mark, and he gets good performances from his professional and well-chosen cast.

Streaming as of yesterday, July 12, on Netflix, Point Blank is certainly a shoo-in for action fans smart enough to follow and stick with a plot that has more in-and-outs/ups-and-down than the spoon-fed pablum we're usually offered, or the at-least-one-hour-too-long super-hero movies audiences still seem willing to sit through and discuss as though these were remotely intelligent or worth our nearly-end-of-times time.

MY SON: Guillaume Canet's an avenging angel-daddy in Christian Carion's silly-but-fun film

Thrillers don't come packed with much more happenstance and coincidence than MY SON, the 2017 film just now opening in the USA from French filmmaker Christian Carion, who co-wrote and directed this trifle. Not to be confused with the much better movie, Your Son, this one is all about the disappearance of a seven-year-old from the sleep-away camp to which his mom and step-dad have sent him. Thank goodness for the boy's father, played with a fierce combination of stupidity and steely-eyed, action-hero resolve by Guillaume Canet, who steps in to save the day.

M. Carion, shown at right, each of whose earlier films TrustMovies has enjoyed, here seems to be working on perhaps his smallest budget yet. His movie, definitely the least of his accomplishments thus far, has few characters and even less believability. Yet once you're far enough into its pretty much straight-ahead story, you're likely to be quite caught up.

This is as much thanks to Canet's bordering-on-crazy performance, as to the child-in-danger storyline. A performer who usually commits totally to his role -- whether it's that of serial-killing cop or game-playing lover -- he does it again here and walks off with a movie that's maybe not quite worth walking off with. Still, what the hell. Canet, shown on poster, top, and below, makes all this very weird fun.

That fine actress Mélanie Laurent (below) is totally wasted in the role of the wife,

but as her new boyfriend, Olivier de Benoist (below) has one terrific scene in which he just about steals the movie.

What is most surprising, I think, is how much suspense Carion is able to muster using situations and plot devices that often seem either tired or silly. While what the movie says about the abilities of the French provincial police departments is not especially good, maybe it's all really about how dad can become a near-super-hero (by only using his brain, helped along by coincidence) when his precious though seldom-seen son is at risk.

Judge for yourself, as My Son -- from Cohen Media Group, in French with English subtitles, and running 84 minutes -- opens this Friday, May 10 in New York City at the Quad Cinema and FIAF's Florence Gould Hall and in the Los Angeles area at the Laemmle Music Hall, followed by a limited national rollout.

Halle Berry fuels Luis Prieto's alternately pulse-pounding and stupid thriller, KIDNAP

Come on, admit it: Sometimes a really good bad movie can be a lot of fun. The most current example is KIDNAP, a film in which Halle Berry plays a beleaguered mother for whom it is not enough that her ex is trying to take all custody away from her. When she turns her back for a couple of minutes, her son is summarily kidnapped (and not, unfortunately, by his dad).

That the audience at the screening TrustMovies attended-- made up mostly of the general public, with a few of us critics scattered throughout  -- was alternately gasping and laughing aloud (the film is not a comedy) should give you some idea of the bizarre nonsense embedded here. This is 94 minutes of ridiculous but often exciting fun.

The director here is Luis Prieto (shown at right), and the screenwriter is Knate Lee (of the Jackass movies and Bad Grandpa, so provenance does count for something). Prieto does a bang-up job with the action, of which there is plenty, but within that action comes most of the stupidity, as well. I'll just make reference to a single scene, in which our heroine, who looks to weigh in at about 85 pounds, over-powers a huge woman who must weigh maybe 250 or more, while being choked to death in the front seat of her car, from which she manages to eject the huge woman who is, yes, behind her in the back seat. (Berry's character manages a similarly bizarre feat, much later in the film, while underwater.)

If you can believe shit like this, you'll swallow, I guess, just about anything -- including the scene in which Ms Berry puts her car in reverse, backs up onto a major highway with the traffic coming toward her at least 60 miles per hour... and does not get hit.

What? You thought you'd stumbled into a sneak preview of the Wonder Woman sequel. 'Fraid not. Still, gasping and then laughing together in a packed theater is not the worst experience in the world. So, if you've an appetite for this kind of thing, by all means indulge it.

Ms Berry looks stunning, as per usual, and the villains are as naughty and nasty as you could wish, while the young actor who plays Berry's son is properly adorable.

While one might question the intentions of an entertainment based around the kidnapping and possible death (and who knows what else prior to that) of a vulnerable child, we're now in the world of Trumpland, after all. So grit your teeth and bear up. (This film, I am told by a fellow critic, is actually three years old, having been stuck in bankruptcy limbo, because of the demise of its former distributor).

Opening nationwide today, Friday, August 4, Kidnap (now being given to us via Aviron Pictures) can be seen all across the country. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

After a ten-year hiatus, Steven Shainberg is back directing--with sci-fi thriller, RUPTURE

You may remember Steven Shainberg from his critically popular Sundance-heralded film, Secretary, or maybe his interesting (but less popular with critics or audiences) Diane Arbus fantasy bio-pic, FUR. That film, and/or possibly some other things, led to our not hearing from Mr. Shainberg (shown below) for a decade, so far as directing is concerned. The good news is, he's back. And the even better news is that his latest film, RUPTURE, is quite a bizarre, frightening and entertaining addition to the sci-fi/kidnap-thriller sub-genre.

It also offers (spoiler ahead, so skip to the next paragraph if you want maximum surprise from this little movie) quite a nice new wrinkle on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers template, especially in the manner in which it introduces new characters as we move along and then slowly unfurls their intentions toward our kidnapped heroine.

That heroine would be the single mom, Renee (played by Noomi Rapace, below: the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), who seems simply a normal woman just trying to provide her young son and herself with decent life prospects.

When, after setting up this sense of normalcy and pleasant family life, our heroine is kidnapped, we feel as shocked, frightened and confused as does she, trying to come to terms with what happened and -- particularly -- to what end?

The latter is doled out to us very slowly and very cleverly by the director (who also contributed the story) and his screenwriter, Brian Nelson, who only allow us and Renee to understand what is happening in such confusing dribs and drabs that this makes our and her frustrations and fear continually mount.

To give away those dribs and drabs would only add more spoilers, so TrustMovies will just say that they are provided by an ensemble of fine character actors like Peter Stormare (above, left), Michael Chiklis, (above, center, and below), Lesley Manville (above, right) and Kerry Bishé, (above, second from left), each of whom creates as much of a character out of these oddball villains, as possible, given that we and the camera rarely leaves the face, body and fear being experienced by the formidable Ms Rapace.

This actress has a fine role here and she gives it what it needs, holding us in thrall and in hope for her future throughout. And Mr. Shainberg sees to it that we stay with her, exterior and interior, until the troubling finale.

The film's ending is a humdinger: leaving a lot open-ended, even as it makes clear what has happened and will continue to happen. Rupture is a nice addition to this sub-genre mash-up. For all the earlier films from which it borrows, the end result seems surprisingly original and very frightening and queasy-making indeed.

From AMBI Media Group and running 102 minutes, Rupture opens this Friday, April 28, in New York City at the Cinema Village and in the L.A. area at the Arena Cinemas. For all you who don't live on either coast, the film will simultaneously hit VOD.

SCHERZO DIABOLICO: Adrián García Bogliano's best yet gets VOD/Digital HD debut this week

The Spanish genre filmmaker Adrián García Bogliano -- who, a couple of years back, gave us the very interesting, low-key horror film Here Comes the Devil, and followed that up with a good episode from the horror omnibus, The ABCs of Death, then handed us a pretty crappy werewolf attempt called Late Phases -- is back this week with his latest and best endeavor so far, a dark, often surprising, and very nasty kidnap thriller called SCHERZO DIABOLICO.

Bogliano, shown at left, seems most often to deal with not-very-healthy family situations, not to mention people to whom it is rather difficult to warm. While this makes what happens to many of his characters a tad easier to accept, it can also distance us from his film's protagonists. This is very much the case with Scherzo Diabolico, the protagonist of which is a short-but-not-unattractive family man (his small fingers would not reach an octave, or so his piano teacher once told him: Listen up, Donald Trump!) whose boss refuses to pay him for overtime and whose wife is all-too-quick with the insults.

So our "hero" hatches a very oddball plot, the putting-into-action of which proves both bizarre and hugely disconcerting. Though it involves kidnapping, there's really no rape or torture included, yet so absolutely thoughtless of the mental well-being of his prisoner is our guy that what eventually happens, while it takes quite a leap of faith, is also so bizarre and joltingly effective that genre aficionados are likely remain on board right through the vicious finale.

Some kind of vengeance is on almost everybody's mind in this thriller, and Bogliano's penchant for exploring narcissistic egos and dysfunctionality is put to fine use. To go further into plot would simply spoil things. Suffice it to say that the musical score, which makes use of some good classical stuff, is top-notch, and the performances are, too -- right down the line.

Especially fine are Bogliano regular Francisco Barreiro (above and further above) as the corporate-ladder-climbing male and Daniela Soto Vell (below, and three photos up) as his "victim." Both are terrifically compelling and believable. And the filmmaker is getting especially good at bouncing back and forth between subtlety and shock, dark comedy and sheer horror. This is a wild ride, but it's one that you'll likely remember for awhile, even given our continuing glut of more-than-passably-entertaining genre movies.

Scherzo Diabolico -- from Dark Sky Films and running 91 minutes -- hits VOD and Digital HD this Tuesday, May 3, for either purchase or rental. I watched the DVD version of the film, and on the disc is a very enjoyable bonus feature in which three of the film's five good actresses talk about their roles as the strong women behind the weak men in the movie. Two of the three actresses' ideas are smart and provocative and make this maybe-20-minute "extra" very much worth watching.  

EMELIE: Michael Thelin/Rich Herbeck's transgressive naughty-babysitter movie opens

The first scene of EMELIE, the new naughty-babysitter film, is exemplary: so initially everyday, then suddenly creepy and frightening, that it takes your breath away. If only the remainder of this movie followed suit. We learn the result of this opening scene during the fraught finale, and it brings us back again to that fine beginning. Most of what lies in between, how-ever, offers a second-rate, occasionally ridiculous, children-in-peril scenario in which a highly unhinged young woman and her barely-seen accomplice spend an evening increasingly terrorizing three kids.

Who this title character, Emelie, actually is we learn in rather poorly executed dribs and drabs midway that show us the usual she-herself-had-a-bad-childhood routine, which does little to assuage the unpleasantness abounding here. As written by Rich Herbeck and directed by Michael Thelin (shown at right), the movie is most enjoyable as an exercise in the transgressive. What our babysitter forces her charges to endure involves things that no children their ages should have to undergo.

Intelligent audiences (most of which will probably not get near this kind of movie) can only wonder what problems will pop up in the later lives of these kids from not just the physical abuse on hand but the emotional/psychological trauma here.

How will elder brother, as a young man, react the first time he's aware of his girlfriend's getting her period? Will his little sister be forever trauma-tized sexually by being forced to watch a rather special kind of porn?

The movie uses all this for cheap thrills, and initially at least, this keeps us glued. But Emelie truly falls apart midway when help arrives but the kids fail to make proper use of it. (Given what our hero manages to do by the time of the film's finale, his refusal to act at this earlier stage smacks more of the necessity to keep the movie's plot unfurling than it does of anything remotely believable.)

We get murder and more, clueless parents and unhelpful neighbors, and mostly the old kids-in-peril syndrome. The performances are very good from those kids -- Joshua Rush as the eldest, Carly Adams as his sister, and especially Thomas Bair as the youngest (shown below, left) -- to Sarah Bolger (shown above and below, right) as the title character, who proves properly sweet-then-scary in what is, truth-be-told, by now a fairly standard characterization.

Buffalo, New York, stands in for Anytown USA, and technical credits are perfectly presentable. Emelie -- from Ultramedia and Dark Sky Films and running a thankfully short 77 minutes plus credits -- opens this Friday, March 4, in New York City at the Cinema Village and in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema. If you're not near either big city but have a hankering for the transgressive, don't worry: Emelie's simultaneously available via VOD.

In Alexandre Arcady's taut, unsettling 24 DAYS, France begins to deal with crimes against Jews

The year was 2006, with the event the kidnaping (for money) and then the torture of a young Frenchman, Ilan Halimi, Jewish and of Moroccan descent, as police and family unite to try to find and save him. The film that has been made from this true story, 24 DAYS, is an extremely unsettling one -- not simply because it deals with the kind of seemingly random, hugely unfair and mostly stupid and senseless crime -- but because that crime deliberately targeted Jews, even if, in this particular case, it was less religious fervor driving the kidnappers than that old saw that equates Jews with money.

As directed by Alexandre Arcady (shown at left and whose only other film I have seen is the pretty but so-so family crime drama, Comme les cinq doigts de la main, also know as Five Brothers and unreleased here in the USA), 24 Days is tension-filled and relatively fast-paced, tossing us into the lives of both the family (as it comes together to help retrieve its missing member) and the police force (who work around the clock to ferret out and apprehend the kidnappers). Known more for making pot-boilers than artistic, critically-approved movies, M. Arcady seems to have tamped down his penchant for mainstream excess and has delivered a surprisingly effective film that works on several levels.

24 Days taps into the fear and horror felt by Ilan's family, especially his mother, given a rich, layered performance from Zabou Breitman, above, right, with Syrus Shahidi, who plays her soon-to-be-missing son. (Ms Breitman, by the way, is also the director and co-writer of one of TrustMovies' favorite films: The Man of My Life.)

Pascal Elbé, left, uses his knack for strength, endurance and repressed emotion to make much of the character of Ilan's dad, whom the police use -- due to those very factors -- as the family member who must deal with the top-dog among the kidnappers.

Interestingly, Ilan's undoing was having gone on a date with a pretty young girl used as bait to entrap the boy, even though he already has a girlfriend/maybe-fiancee with whom he is heavily involved. Infidelity, however, is hardly an excuse for what happens to him.

For their part the police -- with Jacques Gamblin (above, left), Sylvie Testud and Éric Caravaca (above, right) in the major roles -- are shown as professional, caring folk, even if there appears, finally, disagreement among them as to what kind of crime this really is -- simple kidnapping-for-money or one inspired instead by race hatred. (The reason for the kidnapping can also effect how the police investigation is handled.)

The movie, to its credit, comes down on both sides, offering money as the main object of gain, but also showing how the treatment of Ilan -- casual torture, with the young man seen as something less than human by his kidnappers -- is most likely due to his being Jewish, and a helpless victim.

The film hones to a near-documentary style that shows us what is happening and how the rather large group of people involved in the kidnapping work together, under the thumb of its somewhat deranged leader (a frightening performance by Tony Harrisson, above). It also shows how easily the gang might have been tripped up had any of the locals -- who clearly knew that something nefarious was going on -- only come forward.

Unlike so many kidnap movies, this one offers none of the feel-good, nick-of-time resolution which we might expect or hope for. It seems to me that the film adheres as closely to the facts of the case as it can, and thus provides grueling object lessons in police procedure (good and bad), racism, family unity and the need for protection.

From Menemsha Films and running 108 minutes, 24 Days opens this Friday in New York at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and the Kew Gardens Cinema in Queens; in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall; and in another dozen cities across the country in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and (mostly) Florida. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.