Nid de guêpes (2002) - film review

During the 2001 Bastille Day celebrations in France, a band of criminals led by Nasser and Santino prepare to raid a depot and make off with a lorry load of expensive computers.  Simultaneously, the French security services are transporting a notorious Albanian Mafia boss, Abedin Nexhep, across the Franco-German border.  When their convey is attacked by Nexhep’s mercenaries, the security agents are forced to take refuge in the same depot that Santino and his friends are pillaging.  The two groups form an uneasy alliance when they realise they are under attack from Nexhep’s murderous supporters.

The action thriller is a genre which is rarely attempted by French film directors, in spite of its popularity with younger cinemagoers.  Nid de guêpes is a spirited and overall pretty respectable attempt to emulate the kind of blood and guts action thriller that Hollywood has been happily churning out for the past two decades.  For those who are turned on by meaningless violence and gory death, and who are not too bothered by the absence of a plausible plot or characterisation, Nid de guêpes may well appeal have a certain appeal.  For the rest of us, it’s a pretty monotonous piece of comic book trash – soulless, distasteful and actually rather tedious.

Whilst the film is technically stunning, with some convincing action stunts and impressive special events, there is very little beneath its striking gore-stained veneer.  This isn’t so much a pastiche of American films of its kind but a damn near carbon copy, even right down to the familiar monosyllabic mutterings that pass for dialogue.  One major regret with this film is that whilst there are several very talented actors in the cast (Benoît Magimel, Pascal Greggory and Sami Bouajila, to name just three) none of them is really given much to do other than posture embarrassingly with a gun and scream when they get shot at.  Character development is reduced to a momentary show of angst when (yet) another character bites the dust visceral-wise.  We’re obviously not expected to have much sympathy with this bunch of two-dimensional losers.

Nid de guêpes is certainly one of the films which is aimed at a particular segment of the entertainment market, predominantly spotty young Frenchmen who spend most of their time bent over a games console.  It is most definitely not a good illustration of what French cinema does best, although it does demonstrate that it can compete pretty well with Hollywood in the action thriller genre if it wants to.  The question is: does it need to?

© James Travers 2004

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