✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France, Belgium, Luxembourg · 2011
1h 38m
Director Frédéric Jardin
Starring Tomer Sisley, Julien Boisselier, JoeyStarr, Serge Riaboukine
Genre Action, Comedy, Thriller, Romance
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Vincent is a crooked cop whose drug heist goes wrong when he is stabbed and his identity is discovered. Vincent escapes with a bag of cocaine, but it belongs to a powerful mob boss who kidnaps his son for ransom. Now he has until the end of the night to return the stash and save his son...
Given how much it's in motion, Sleepless Night doesn't have much time for character development, but Sisley is a memorable antihero whose toughness barely masks his growing desperation and exhaustion, as his bleeding knife wound serves as the film's version of a countdown clock.
An American remake is already being prepped. We suggest Hollywood simply cries uncle now and calls it a day.
Despite the ongoing momentum, Sleepless Night never loses touch with its story.
Slant Magazine by Jaime N. Christley
After a few turns in the modest narrative, an unlikely sense of structural resilience begins to emerge.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Hectic and harebrained, this galloping French thriller tosses a potpourri of plot points - crooked cops, sleazy gangsters, stolen drugs and an underage hostage - into a packed-to-the-gills nightclub, and stirs. Repeatedly.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Frederic Jardin's gripping Sleepless Night maintains a consistently high pitch without growing monotonous.
Austin Chronicle by Kimberley Jones
Sisley is a former stand-up comic, although you'd never guess it here: Finding himself in the eye of a colossal shit storm of his own making, his Vincent is brusque and action oriented, his face, a picture of ulceration in progress.
There's no mistaking Jardin's playful mastery of the Hollywood-style action aesthetic; his movie starts in high gear and accelerates steadily from there.
It's fast, lean, satisfying, and forgettable; nothing special, really, until you realize that the movies have largely lost the knack for brisk mayhem like this.
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