Fridae

There’s something so seductively 80s retro about The Assault. Ah, it must be the generic feel of a film where armed religious fanatics take over a plane, terrorise the crew and passengers and die in a noisy shootout at the end. It’s almost like watching one of those ‘based on real life’ telemovies from that era.

The year is 1994 though and the terrorists are religious extremists planning to crash an Air France plane from Algeria into the Eiffel Tower. Trust the French to subtly rub it into American noses that they managed to prevent their own 9/11 in 1994.

Three plots sinuously intertwine as the countdown begins and body count ratchets upwards: the hijacking on the plane itself, led by a bunch of terrorists who are convinced of the incontestable justice of their cause and methods; the ops room drama featuring a talented French analyst and her attempts to negotiate with the terrorists and command the situation; and the preparation of one ordinary GIGN (i.e. French SWAT team) member as he gears up to the final, messy assault while his distraught wife watches the drama unfold on television.

The retro feel is no doubt aided by the pic’s extreme desaturation, which turns everything into a documentary-like sepia. The script is so 1980s you can name the stereotypes offhand: evil terrorist leader, principled captive, square-jawed hero, brainy femme and so on. Given that modern sensibilities as well as United 93 have managed to humanise even the ‘evil’ hijackers and terrorists, it seems a retrogressive move to now make a film where the terrorists are only translated when they’re threatening people and shouting Allahu Akhbar – but not when they’re praying their jitters away in their most human and vulnerable moments.

The Assault is a generic though well-made and well-shot genre thriller with appropriately claustrophobic handheld camerawork that would be ideal if any one wanted to relieve their childhood watching terrorist on plane tele-movies on a bigger budget or Die Hard on a lower budget.