Why almost every single movie I watched from the 2000s feels like it's dragging on?
I suppose it was a sort of style back then. I have seen the remake of this movie twice, and I do see the resemblence. However, here, I did not appreciate the lack of story arcs.
The main motivation for our lead character is established, but the background and other, more broad information is lacking. I would love to know more about his past. If he started to learn how to actually handle a gun only recently, or if he has some past to back it up.
I also missed the background on the whole crew of robbers.
The first half of the film, it feels like literally nothing is happening. Then it takes a turn, and the rest of the runtime is packed with story.
It is more of a drama, than an action film, but I could not handle the horrible visual effects, that were pulling me out of otherwise pretty well-handled action scenes. Even if there were only few of them.
Using smoke grennades as props for VFX flashbangs was definitely an interesting idea, but did not work out at all.
This movie came out 20 years ago, back then, quality VFX was much harder to do, and I am glad they attempted, however, when they saw it was not working out, they should have chosen a different path.
The concept of this film is very interesting, and I'm glad it was chosen as a basis for a remake, which did add a lot, and covered a lot of what I missed in this movie. But it had to be a great foundation, for the later writers, to be able to build on something.
This movie deserves a watch, gives insight, into the "low budget" french cinema of the 2000s. I mean for one tenth of the budget for "Wrath of Man" this is a solid piece of work.
