From French writer/director Nicolas Boukhrief, a well-drawn middle-weight revenge thriller, structured like a workplace sit-com that keeps erupting into savagery. The workplace an Armored Truck company on the verge of new American ownership, so the staff doesn’t know who’ll still be around next month. And what a collection of loafers & wingnuts they are, cast strongly enough to support their own spin-off series. Imagine the writers of THE OFFICE having the urge to script a violent actioner. Not that you’d know this from the prologue, a straight curtain-raising heist: danger, violence & death as an armored truck explodes in the field. The main story starts as Albert Dupontel, a man with no discernable past to explain his loner attitude & sudden debilitating seizures, joins the company on a one-month probation period. Reticent and introverted in the midst of bored drivers pranking each other (booze, drugs, socializing), his true reason for being there and for requesting the most dangerous routes, only coming into focus at mid-point when we get just enough info to know what, or rather whom he’s looking for . . . possibly one of the employees within the company. Loaded with excellent perfs, Jean Dujardin exceptional as the kind of quick pal a less constrained personality might confide in. The eventual explanations truly satisfying for a change, the violence coming in clean, take-no-prisoners style, the outcomes sentiment-free.
DOUBLE-BILL: Guy Ritchie, Jason Statham and an extra half-hour’s running time remade this as WRATH OF MAN/’21. (not seen here)
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