Touches You

Simply A Masterpiece

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The Nest is a good movie but it lacks one thing. A soundtrack. It's rather dull without a soundtrack. Here's a tip. If you are watching it on Netflix or from another online source, open a few ,more tabs in your browser and go to YouTube and open the theme songs to every John Carpenter movie ever made (Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, Starman, Escape from New York and so on), as well as theme songs from The Warriors and horror movies such as Suspiria or The Excorcist or whatever else you can think of and play these theme songs simultaneously while you are watching The Nest. You will find it a much more enjoyable experience.

This is pretty ordinary stuff for those not devoted to brainless action flicks; a kind of fusion of the ideas behind Assault on Precinct 13 (which was itself a remake of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo) and the Living Dead pictures, this French spin on the Hollywood action genre takes too long to set up its siege scenario and populates itself with colourless characters with whom the viewer has no chance of identifying, but has enough enthusiasm and zip to lift it above the more cynical efforts produced by Hollywood these days..The action mostly takes place in a warehouse to which an under siege armoured vehicle carrying a Mafia chieftain to trial retreats when it is ambushed by what seems like the entire Albanian chapter of the organisation. As luck would have it, a bunch of crooks are in the middle of stealing a couple of container's worth of laptops when the police arrive, and an uneasy alliance is formed between them as they attempt to prevent the gangsters gaining entry.Now if I was one of those highly-trained strategic swatty-types with a security guard who knew how to operate a gantry crane at my disposal the first thing I would have done is place a couple of fully-loaded containers in front of each entranceway and sat it out in relative safety. So would you, I imagine. Granted, it wouldn't make much of a movie, but at least you'd have been safe. But of course this is action movie land – 'pure' action, apparently, which as far as I can gather means that there is virtually no attempt made to give any of the characters any, well… character, and everyone races around firing indiscriminately like a testosterone-charged stag party on a paintball weekend.It takes nearly forty-five minutes for all the strands to be pulled together into anything approaching a coherent storyline – up until then only the scriptwriter knows what is going on – but once the real action starts, in the form of enthusiastic gunplay, the film does at least begin to entertain in that mindless sense that draws us to these kind of flicks in the first place. There's nothing very original about any of it – although I liked the way the advancing mafia army in their night vision outfits resembled alien invaders, and the prominent and strong roles given to the two women – and the plot doesn't stand up under even passing scrutiny, but it's all pulled off with a certain Gallic style by director Florent Emilio Siri, who has since gone on to direct action heavyweight Bruce Willis in The Hostage, and the film is also free of any misplaced sentimentality as it winds its way towards an entirely predictable climax.

The Nest has a lot of things going for it. An interesting premise, pretty good acting, intense action, and some really above average cinematography and direction. However I found that I just couldn't get as engaged as I really wanted to in this movie. I think part of the problem was the dialogue, which tended to be a bit comic-bookish. Also the characters, while not totally one-dimensional, don't really add up to anyone you like enough to seriously root for. And I think in a siege movie that's an important element - you have to want the people who are holding out to make it. I wasn't invested enough in any of the characters to care whether they came through the other side. But watching this film isn't a total waste of time either - some of the scenes are really amazingly well done, almost poetic. A mixed bag, but tons of eye candy for true action fans.

One doesn't (when one is American, at least) expect to get glossy, high-budget action films from the French; I didn't realize they even MADE this kind of movie. Do industry folk believe that foreign action films won't travel well or be able to compete with similar Hollywood product? If so, I'm surprised THE NEST didn't change all that. (Maybe it went straight to DVD here in the US.) Whatever the reason, this superior example of tight, twisty action film-making is worth recommending to anybody interested. Boasting a great plot, better than average writing and acting, and knockout direction, the film involves four sets of people--two of them lawbreakers, the other two law enforcers, whom chance and a little coincidence bring together with frightening, violent, bloody and surprisingly believable results. Most of the action is confined to one huge warehouse, and the director manages to eek out every bit of surprise, suspense and clever logistics from this unusual location. I have not seen as good a film of this type since the original "Die Hard."An ensemble piece using a terrific group of actors, the movie waits until its close to list its cast. I was so involved by the logistics and fast pace that I failed to recognize several of my favorite French actors: Benoit Magimel ("The Piano Teacher," "The King Dances"), Pascal Greggory ("Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train"), and Sami Bouajila ("The Adventures of Felix"). Director Florent Emilio Siri has a new film coming out next year ("The Hostage"); on the basis of his "Nest," I can't wait.Note: the DVD comes in its original French language with English subtitles and with an English dubbed alternative--which I have heard is badly done. This is NOT a dialog-heavy movie (most actions films aren't) so try it with the subtitles. I did--and was hooked from start to finish.