Netflix’s Sentinelle, with Olga Kurylenko
Olga Kurylenko in Sentinelle.
Picture: Netflix
What use is your algorithm if it doesn’t alert me to a film through which Olga Kurylenko goes full-on John Wick on the French Riviera? Julien Leclercq’s Sentinelle appears to be at risk of falling by means of the Netflix cracks — one of many many international movies that premiere quietly on the streamer with out making a ripple culturally — and on some stage, it’s not laborious to see why. Kurylenko’s profession has possibly not gone in addition to some hoped after her flip as a “Bond woman” in Quantum of Solace, however she’s a terrific actress, and has endeared herself to weirdos like me with roles in such critically dismissed however secretly wonderful movies as Oblivion, To the Marvel (for which I’d have fortunately given her an Oscar), and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Within the grand scheme of issues, there are actually worthier titles to spotlight than an 80-minute French action-movie knockoff that might have gone straight to DVD again within the days when DVDs have been a factor. Nonetheless, Sentinelle is an admirably swift, elegantly filmed spine-snapping motion thriller with moments of unusual grace.
The movie opens in Syria, the place Klara (Kurylenko), working as a French military interpreter, witnesses the killing of her comrades by a younger suicide bomber.
Returning residence to Good, she is transferred to work with Opération Sentinelle, a real-life, ongoing home navy operation France initiated after the ghastly terror assaults of 2015. The spectacle of bands of totally armed troopers slowly, tensely strolling alongside sunny Mediterranean boardwalks as unusual residents jog and mothers go by with strollers is actually a dissonant picture, and the movie embraces the surrealism and monstrosity of this new actuality.
Shattered by her wartime expertise and popping opioids like sweet, Klara sees threats in every single place. At one level, she trains her rifle on a baby whose father is tying his shoelaces, as a result of the child is making the identical open-armed stance that the boy within the movie’s opening sequence did. It’s a moderately blunt, apparent character second — however it additionally means that Klara’s trauma is one small a part of a common ambiance of suspicion and hate. Later, she chases after a mysterious determine alongside the waterfront; when she catches him, she discovers that it’s her vendor.
At all times on edge, Klara lastly loses it when her youthful sister Tania (Marilyn Lima) is crushed and sexually assaulted after going off with some Russians at an area nightclub. Suspicion quickly settles on Yvan Kadnikov (Andrey Gorlenko) and his father Leonid Kadnikov (Michel Nabokoff), the latter an oligarch with pals in excessive locations and a military of bodyguards at his disposal. Pissed off with the cops’ methodical method, Klara takes issues into her personal palms, and a number of body-slamming, limb-breaking, head-smashing beatdowns ensue.
The aforementioned John Wick films undoubtedly appear to be an inspiration right here, however Sentinelle doesn’t fairly match the gloriously cartoonish heights of that collection. For starters, it lacks a Hollywood finances, and let’s face it, Olga Kurylenko isn’t precisely a veteran ass-kicker like Keanu Reeves or Charlize Theron. However that may be an asset, too. Klara by no means comes off as a killing machine (not even of the lumbering, dadsploitationy variety, à la Liam Neeson). She’s quiet, however she’s not cool. She’s susceptible. She will get harm. Each struggle scene feels prefer it may simply finish together with her useless or maimed, which brings each unpredictability and a way of penance to it. Klara needs revenge — however part of her possibly additionally needs oblivion and absolution. The image is fleet, however it’s not gentle. And Kurylenko, whose magnificence has at all times had a haunted high quality to it, is sort of good within the half; Klara’s unrelenting desperation holds collectively the movie’s competing tones.
One doesn’t need to make too nice a declare for Sentinelle. Motion fiends may want it had extra breathless setpieces. Arthouse varieties may balk on the easy characterizations and bare-bones storyline, particularly because the movie flirts with some essential hot-button points (terrorism, militarism, assault, habit). However there’s one thing to be stated for the lean, modest effectivity of a film that is aware of how you can seize your consideration and never overstay its welcome.
