This film (unfortunately) is most famous because it was set to come out at the same time as a Islamic terrorist attack in France, and one of the reasons I waited a while to watch this film was because I was wary of how Muslims would be portrayed in it etc. Let me without spoilers tell you this film is almost entirely unpolitical, with the 'Islamic threat' so far down the radar it can't even be said to be a theme.

Now on to the film! Do you like Idris Elba? If you don't, stop reading this review and never watch this film. This is his film. He plays a bad-ass CIA agent (there is an irony of a British actor playing a CIA man stationed in France) who does not like to follow rules, and he is on the trail of a master pick pocket (Richard Madden) who gets wrapped up in a plot to blow up France. Cliché, yes, but the film does avoid some obvious ones, surprising pleasantly at some points.

Elba is menacing, cool and always fantastic, and all of his co-stars pull their weight, but none are particularly likable, and they just have very little chemistry together. But, this is an action, thriller, so who really cares about that. The action is solid, but not mind blowing. The balance between action and thriller is about right, and the director does not get distracted with too many side characters or plots.

This is about as standard a movie as you can get, with the only real plus being Elba. He needs to do more action movies, he needs to be the next Bond. 6.5, but IMDb won't let me give it that score so I bump to a 7 on Elba's performance!

BASTILLE DAY is a solid action thriller made as a collaboration between Great Britain and France. I watched it under the ludicrous re-titling THE TAKE. Essentially this is a film in the style of intense French action cinema like MEA CULPA, with an added British cast doing American accents. The accent thing can be distracting in places but is far from horrendous as you'd expect. This is a short and snappy thriller with an interesting story enlivened by some great action sequences. My only real problem with it is that it doesn't have the drive and momentum it needs to make it a truly great film. The action bits are highlights and very well directed and edited, but outside of the action the story feels a little slower and more unfocused.

Idris Elba is a suitably hard-hitting hero and given solid support from a likable Richard Madden, here breaking out from GAME OF THRONES. I could have done without Kelly Reilly, however, whose extraneous character seems to have been added in purely because the director previously made EDEN LAKE. Speaking of James Watkins, he's previously only been known for horror fare like THE WOMAN IN BLACK, but he make a good transition to thrillers here. BASTILLE DAY peaks early on with a thrilling rooftop chase which goes above and beyond and features enhanced sound effect design to make it one of the best I've ever seen, and the film remains fitfully exciting and watchable to the end, despite a heavy-handed political agenda in the script and various clichés in the story.