AKA - A Better than Expected French Action Thriller Movie

I was a bit skeptical about this movie since I was not familiar with the lead cast at all and not really that interested with the seemingly standard premise. Nevertheless, as there was no other new movies (aside from the one I posted yesterday) that intrigued me, I decided to give it a try after all. And so how was this movie? Let's find out more, shall we?

Brief Story Line

Adam Franco (Alban Lenoir - French Blood, Hero Corp TV series etc) was a French special ops agent who had been placed in Africa for many years. But when a plan to kill Sudanese terrorist named Moktar Al Tayeb (Kevin Layne) in France failed, Adam was asked to return home to infiltrate a crime syndicate led by Victor Pastore (Eric Cantona) who was Moktar's old friend.

As Adam tried his best to find out Moktar's whereabouts, he became quite close to Pastore's step child Jonathan (Noe Chabbat). This would create complication for Adam as he would be distracted by it, while still having to complete his assignment due to the time sensitivity.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

OK, that was apparently better than imagined. I half expected to be bored by the film or lost interest after a short while. But it turned out that the early part immediately kept me glued to the TV when we were introduced to Adam Franco who was like a killing machine as he fought brutally in violent fashion. After a brief scene explaining why Adam had to return to France, it became quite interesting on how he managed to infiltrate the crime family.

As the movie progressed, I thought the story telling was quite smoothly done. A deeper back story certainly gave better appreciation to the lead character Adam, otherwise he would just be a simple minded person whose aim was only to complete his task using violence. Alban Lenoir definitely suitable to play in action role (he used to be professional stuntmaN) Oh, another surprise for me was the appearance of Eric Cantona. I have never been a fan of him since he used to be a footballer playing for the club I disliked the most, but he seemed to be convincing enough as this character. The young child Jonathan was OK, although his immediate closeness to Adam from the moment he met him seemed a bit unrealistic for me. The rest did their job adequately, including Saidou Camara who played as Pee Wee, the only character that I thought brought a bit of lightness in here.

In term of action, I thought this one really delivered. The fights were swift with the heavy use of brute force by Adam combined with his amazing shooting skills. The film maker did not hesitate to show the violent nature of the actions like the head shots, blood spattering and so on which made me exclaimed few times (one scene in particular when Adam was fighting his way in to the villain's location). I felt those were the scenes that I enjoyed even better than the climax. I think the director Morgan S. Dalibert (in what seemed to be his his directorial debut) did a pretty good job. He was also credited as the writer with Alban Lenoir himself.

The movie's duration of almost 2 hours might seem pretty long, but with the quite engaging characters and well enough action sequence, it did not really feel tiring. Although the main plot might not have been the most original kind and there were not any surprises, I still felt as a whole it was pretty interesting and had a satisfying enough conclusion. Btw there was no mid or post end credit scene here. So if you want to watch a movie about undercover agent trying to infiltrate a crime syndicate but ended up having to do a lot more than that, with plenty of exciting action scenes, then I think this would be to your liking. As long as you do not expect the action thriller with complicated story with the best kind of scenario, then you should be fine.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stasr