This is French B-list stuff: overplotted, undercharacterized. In style, it seems to be aiming at a Hong-Kong shootemup look and feel as applied to a modern, globalised, cool Paris-by-night. The French title means something like "daylight can wait", which makes more sense, since the film takes place over one very long, very action-packed, high-body-count night, with the opening sequence taking place in the blinding sunshine of a Mexican desert (Spain apparently standing in, per the credits) and the closing sequence in the pale dawn.
The actors (the women are completely negligible sources of overacted hysteria)are all journeymen from film and TV. They are talented and, as always, have more expressive and care-worn faces than their American counterparts. They are supposed to be playing out, in middle age, the final stages of a lifelong bromance. The problem is that the screenplay doesn't show this so much as it tells it through stagey pieces of dialogue ("remember how great it was?", "remember how messed up we were?", and so forth). Given the desperate straits into which they are thrown, with their nemesis psyopathic enemy out to kill them as violently as possible, their odd-couple banter comes across as contrived. It is to the actors' credit that there are flashes of spontaneity and rapport despite the best efforts of the screenwriter/director.
Give credit for these moments, for an effectively creepy evocation of Paris nightlife, for the high-color-saturation direct video (some great traveling shots along some uniconic Paris boulevards), and for a great sequence involving a speedboat bobbing in the middle of the Seine. As for the blood-and-gore, well, the Hong Kong guys do it better.
The actors (the women are completely negligible sources of overacted hysteria)are all journeymen from film and TV. They are talented and, as always, have more expressive and care-worn faces than their American counterparts. They are supposed to be playing out, in middle age, the final stages of a lifelong bromance. The problem is that the screenplay doesn't show this so much as it tells it through stagey pieces of dialogue ("remember how great it was?", "remember how messed up we were?", and so forth). Given the desperate straits into which they are thrown, with their nemesis psyopathic enemy out to kill them as violently as possible, their odd-couple banter comes across as contrived. It is to the actors' credit that there are flashes of spontaneity and rapport despite the best efforts of the screenwriter/director.
Give credit for these moments, for an effectively creepy evocation of Paris nightlife, for the high-color-saturation direct video (some great traveling shots along some uniconic Paris boulevards), and for a great sequence involving a speedboat bobbing in the middle of the Seine. As for the blood-and-gore, well, the Hong Kong guys do it better.