Idris Elba is an agent who plays by the rules. He always shows due respect to superiors – even if they're in the wrong – and is scrupulous about completing even the most irrelevant paperwork. I'm joking, of course. Elba is a maverick. He's a loose canon. He's a lone wolf. You know the sort of thing. "What are you doing, going in with no back-up?" that bloke out of Game of Thrones asks. "I'm reckless and irresponsible," Idris replies. What's that? "You should think about anger management," Game of Thrones man says later on. You've made your point.
I'm not absolutely sure where Bastille Day is set, but the 47 second-unit shots of the Eiffel Tower suggest that it just might be Paris. Grappling unconvincingly with an American accent, Richard Madden – formerly Robb Stark – plays a pickpocket at loose in (that fifth glimpse of the Arc de Triomphe has swung it) France's eternal city of love.
Obviously, he’s not an ordinary, cynical pickpocket. Something awful happened that made him into a believable anti-hero.
Given recent tragedies in France, you would struggle to argue that the central premise is in good taste, but the triggering catastrophe is nicely Hitchcockian. Misunderstood pickpocket targets a young woman who, following unconvincing indoctrination by shamelessly fake jihadis, has chickened out from placing a bomb at the offices of a right-wing political party.
The thief whips her bag, rifles through it and, unimpressed by the cuddly toy, leaves it in a public place. The resulting explosion sends the city into panic. But will the police and the visiting CIA be too hidebound, too cautious, too hampered by convention? Fear not. Agent Elba is at hand to hang Frenchies by their heels.
The action is tolerable after a shamelessly post-Bourne fashion. Elba confirms that, even when idling in first gear, he has enough charisma to justify employment.
But this really is second-rate, bargain-bin entertainment. The dialogue is idiotic. The muddy cinematography manages to make such famously pulchritudinous people as Elba and Kelly Reilly look as if they’ve just stumbled damply in from an evening’s bingo. And the big twist has been lifted shamelessly from one of the 1980s great action flicks. Can you guess what it is yet?
