Movies, Action, Drama
AKA is a French action thriller designed to be part international spy/agent and part police crime mobster drama. The movie stars Alban Lenoir as Adam Franco, a French special forces agent normally assigned to Africa and the Middle East as a Jason Bourne type troubleshooter.
Only this time his boss Krueger, played by Thibault de Montalembert, decides to give him a domestic assignment in France, find an African Sudanese warlord and former ally of France by infiltrating a crime mobster’s gang, and neutralize the Sudanese “terrorist” threat to the French government.
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The premise is electrifying as it at once involves international CIA-type (DGSE in France) political intrigue and gang mafia action with police FBI (DST in France) overtones. Of course, Adam (Lenoir) is surprised by his boss, since his unit’s assignments are never on the French mainland and are always for overseas territories.
AKA is part of a current series of French movies that have mixed action and intrigue with both international and domestic French political issues.
In fact, Alban Lenoir’s star power has been on a steady rise for more than a decade, quickly catching up to Jason Statham’s celebrity in French territories, who rose to prominence in a similar set of films starting with French director, Luc Besson.
Some moviegoers may not recollect, however, before Hobbs and Shaw, before Fast and Furious, The Mechanic, and The Meg, Jason Statham got his career launched in a trilogy of French action movies, The Transporter series.
Lenoir is definitely less elegant nor as refined as Statham’s heroes, though he is no less charismatic on screen. Lenoir comes across far more brutal, big, quieter and more lethal.
Lenoir’s heroes are typically closer to the MCU marine jarhead The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and to some of the Vin Diesel characters and the current Reacher series starring Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher. And still despite the obvious similarities, Lenoir and production team manage to imbue his films with a distinct French character.
Although he started his career way back as a skinhead in the 2002 movie, The Truth About Charlie, it was not until 2015, where he played Marco Lopez, a white slums neo-Nazi skinhead who did not really fit in as a neo-Nazi with his gang in the film French Blood.
Lenoir received recognition for his role in French Blood and his star has been on a hot streak ever since with 15 Minutes of War (2019 film about French special forces and the Foreign Legion on the Somalian Frontier in a true story hostage rescue operation), 2020 Lost Bullet and the 2022 Lost Bullet 2 sequel.
Both French Blood and 15 Minutes of War are recommended viewing, if you enjoy AKA and Lenoir’s method of interpretation, although in both of the aforementioned films, it is an ensemble cast of actors that pull the films together.
Starring as Franco-Italian mafia mob boss Victor Pastore, is Eric Cantona, another big-name celebrity in France and The United Kingdom, who is basically a complete unknown in the USA.
Unfortunately unlike Dwayne Johnson as Hobbs or Dave Bautista as Drax, Cantona as Victor Pastore does not get any funny or humorous line of dialogue, not even a humorous situation, despite the obvious bountiful occasions to take a shot at French and European police standards or even French DGSE snafus that made news headlines in the past.
Cantona as Victor is best positioned as a character to deliver a livelier open discussion with the public and the moviegoer. Unfortunately he gets only straight lines tacked to his role as a mob boss managing his business, his underlings and his family.
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With Kevin Layne rejoining Lenoir from 15 Minutes of War, to play the Sudanese warlord Moktar Al Tayeb, the deck is stacked for low level action and intrigue, the film plays all the usual notes with skill and deftness but never really rises to distinguish itself in any remarkable way.
The movie starts out awfully nice with big swooping cinematic vistas from Libyan landscapes and gives us nonstop action from overseas into the heart of France. The problem though is you should not expect a James Bond or Mission Impossible caper.
The budget just isn’t there for that level of sets and props, plus the character Adam Franco is more of a blue-collar military operative.
Our hero might be neck deep into trouble and action every few minutes but many of the situations feel familiar from other similar French and European films.
The other problem is that this movie tries to be sane and plausible, unlike John Wick 4. AKA succeeds with less action where JW4 fails. The story tried to weave human and personal dramas with mixed results.
Lucille Guillaume and Noé Chabbat play the victims of the Pastore crime family. Guillaume as Hélène gives a sufficiently strong and convincing performance while Chabbat is teetering on the brink of the spoiled rich kid with a heart of gold, and barely avoids being irritating as weakling Jonathan.
Eric Cantona’s star power is wasted in AKA. He is the former heavyweight French football player who as the star player for the English team Manchester United ensured their brand on the international map. In Europe, Cantona has legendary status in terms of celebrity, but as viewers in the United States, we just don’t know who he is.
Equally interesting, this film sports an unusually large cast of supporting actors, almost all of which are unknowns in North America, and that adds to
their ability to portray their characters without pre-conceived audience stereotypes (for example Chris Evans is Captain America, to moviegoers he can’t really play a bad guy, when he does, and he did in the 2022 The Gray Man, it doesn’t really mesh with his pre-established public persona).
Directed and written by Morgan Dalibert, AKA manages just enough tension, violence and mayhem to keep the viewers from snoring all the way to the final scene and closing credits. It’s a far cry from 15 Minutes of War but at worst remains watchable and passable as an action film.
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