Opening June 7 at Oak Tree 6: Director Eric Valette continues his efforts to keep you awake during French films with The Prey (La Proie), a film that asks the question, What would happen if The Fugitive was about a bank robber with the speed and reflexes of Jason Bourne? And what if he was trying to stop a murder before it took place, rather than prove his innocence?
Albert Dupontel plays Franck Adrien, who’s knocked over a bank for a cool two million euro (that’s 2.6 million U.S.!), and is trying to wait out his sentence without being killed in prison by an impatient partner (or Russians, because they will kill you, that’s how they are). Dupontel is credible as a mistrustful loner — though you do wonder where he mail-ordered his wife Anna (Caterina Murino) — and gives real flair to Franck’s improvisational moves once he’s on the run.
You understand why Franck has trust issues, once you (and he) find out that quiet cellmate who kept to himself was not the best person to give his home address to. Incredibly normal Jean-Louis Maurel (Stéphane Debac) is a serial killer with a thing for young girls. The Prey ups the cat-and-mouse between Franck and Jean-Louis by giving the Tommy Lee Jones part to Alice Taglioni, who plays superflic Claire Linné, in charge of a special police ops team and a little disgruntled at being pulled off big busts to deal with some lousy bank robber. (Robbing a bank? Is that even against the law still?)
Franck is never more than a half-step ahead of Claire, so a large part of the film is hair’s-breadth escapes; my favorite is the backyard-hedge run that summons up both Ferris Bueller and Cheever (remember the one about swimming pools?) while the village streets swarm with police cars and trucks. It does come to seem incredible that Franck could maintain that energy, given the blood loss, but who has time to worry over details when someone’s busting out of a third-story window?
This is a fantastic date movie for the action-movie fan, as right up until it starts, your companion will likely be impressed that you suggested a French film with subtitles. Once the prison shanks come out, obviously, they’re going to catch on.
