Sleepless Night
2011 ‘Nuit Blanche’ Directed by Frédéric Jardin
Synopsis
A cop with a connection to the criminal underworld finds his secret life exposed when he and his partner are caught stealing cocaine from a powerful drug dealer, a move that puts his son's life in jeopardy.
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Nothing of great substance here: Corrupt cop steals duffel full of cocaine. Drug lord kidnaps cop's son. Bag goes missing. (The tagline puts it more efficiently: "He took their drugs. They took his son.") Nothing we haven't seen 1,000 times before, but damned if this isn't a tight piece of thriller craftsmanship, helped by the restrictions of a nightclub setting that becomes the Nakatomi Plaza of this scenario. As commercial French thrillers go, this puts the vast majority of Besson productions to shame.
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I hate to sum up a movie in a vague, immature burst of excitement, but I'll make an exception for SLEEPLESS NIGHT, so here goes:
Holy fucking shit!
That's basically the reaction I keep coming back to thinking about the movie. It's explosive, unexpected and just one of the best action films in a while (and that's saying something, considering that we've been treated to a number of truly great action cinema recently).
Vincent is a police officer who also dabbles in stealing drugs. On one faithful morning, a heist goes wrong. As a result, Vincent gets recognized and the owner of the drugs, Jose, kidnaps Vincent's son as leverage. Vincent then sets out to get his son back and…
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A frenetic French action film that never stops moving, an obstacle course with a desperate crooked cop trying to get his son back from a sketchy nightclub owner. I was hooked from the start, this guy goes through pure hell. It looked like the actors did most of their own stunts aswell. I liked the ambigious ending, even though it's a big trend in foreign film. Check this one out.
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A high-energy action-thriller, essentially TAKEN meets THE RAID meets DIE HARD in a French nightclub.
Some fantastic sequences along the way and a palpable sense of tension and desperation throughout. The story comes nicely full-circle but may leave too many threads dangling for some viewers.
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A vicious, brutal, and fundamentally human French action movie that blurs the line between bad and good as it beats the sense out of dozens. Full review at Next Projection.
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Sleepless Night (2011)
Frédéric Jardin
C-Merde.
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This movie grabs you by the throat with the first scene and doesn't let go for 90 minutes. It is a "bad cop" story, compressed almost entirely into a french nightclub. The span of the film is barely more than one night (hence the title). All of this whittling down makes for a claustrophobic, neurotic thriller.
The action is in your face, and in the characters faces as well. The close ups in this movie are very well used. They convey panic, confusion, and hysteria. The bookends to the film are a bit weak, but very few movies can pull that off, and they are not offensively bad.
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Nifty plate-spinner thriller. It's hard to be a (corrupt French cop) in the city. Enhanced by persuasive performances and breathless pace.
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That was fucking fun
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A lean, mean French action thriller that combines the sweaty desperation of Die Hard with the corruption and duplicity of good film noir. Tomar Sisley plays the corrupt cop whose robbery of a drug lord comes back to bite him when his son is taken hostage by the guys he ripped off. Now he has to make his way through the labyrinthine nightclub where his son is being held while avoiding all the shady characters trying to stop him.
It's a can't-miss premise with high stakes and the film makes the most of it as every setpiece involves our "hero" seeing his options dwindle and his desperation rise. The antagonists are mostly cardboard cutouts of Scarface type gangsters and don't…
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great bit of action cinema
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Netflix
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The action is decent, for a french film. Too bad the script is, sometimes, idiotic.
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Pretty fun movie, but not really on the same level as Taken (which the pseudo byline was: Taken in a night club). Great action scenes, but how the entire film was contained to a single location was a bit unbelievable.
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Props to some thrilling action sequences, the kitchen smackdown was a joy to watch. Sadly though the rest of the film doesn't be enough to separate itself from the dozens cookie-cutter thrillers like this we get each year.