Review of Point Blank

'Point Blank' begins with a bang. Some murderous armed assailants are hunting a wounded man, Hugo, through the streets of Paris. After several minutes of frantic evasion, Hugo is struck by a speeding vehicle and whisked off to hospital. While he lies in a near-comatose state in the ICU, his ruthless pursuers make a further assassination attempt, which is foiled by a male nurse called Samuel. The goons promptly kidnap Samuel's pregnant wife Nadia, and blackmail him to extricate their quarry from the hospital. Samuel revives the critically injured man with some magic potion from the dispensary, spirits him out of the building and joins him on the run, since the police have now learned the former patient is a wanted murderer.

The frantic pursuit continues until the film's final moments - and except for the French dialog, 'Point Blank' is indistinguishable from a cookie-cutter Hollywood action thriller. Its paper-thin plot possesses some fleeting moments of credibility - unless one makes the mistake of examining them too closely. The action sequences are gritty and realistic - except when they lapse into the standard preposterous stunts that are obligatory in this genre of film. Apart from these drawbacks, the story's principal flaw is that Samuel and Nadia are so brave and sympathetic that the conclusion of their journey through the criminal underworld and corrupt cops of Paris is never in doubt. A thriller lacking the crucial ingredient of tension is scarcely a thriller at all.