Point Blank (2010)

French guy must battle cops, crooks to save pregnant wife

Packing the force and shock of a vicious pistol-whip, Point Blank is a sleek French thriller that outperforms just about any recent American counterpart. Opening with a foot chase that culminates with one of the participants getting run over by a motorcycle, Point Blank hits the ground running and never lets character development or plot holes get in the way of momentum and excitement. That said, the film does just enough to get us involved in these characters and give the action a necessary sense of substance. Following a man whose pregnant wife is kidnapped after he becomes entangled with a shadowy group of criminals and corrupt cops, Point Blank certainly doesn’t rethink Hitchcock’s old “innocent man on the run” formula; it also features its share of the genre’s standard farfetched plot twists. But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in skill and sheer velocity.