Fridae

Just a couple weeks ago, Man on a Ledge gave us a rather implausible everyman-in-peril thriller involving an innocent man getting targeted by an unholy alliance of one-percenters and corrupt law enforcement. Here is a film that arrives on its heels almost as an antidote, feeling something vaguely closer to real life than a cartoon.

The man targeted by corrupt law enforcement is nurse-in-training Samuel (Gilles Lelouche) who is an expecting father given his pregnant wife (Elena Anaya). A man involved in an accident is lying in the hospital where he works. One evening upon returning home, Daniel suddenly finds his wife being kidnapped by some pretty nasty criminal types associated with the man in hospital. Turns out said man is actually notorious crook Hugo Sartet (Roschdy Zem) whose associates want him out of hospital. Daniel eventually uncovers a conspiracy involving corrupt cops in an unholy alliance with some of France's one-percenters, who don't wish to have their skeletons in their closets uncovered. The irony of the situation is that his likeliest ally is now Sartet, who is a cunning, streetwise, dangerous criminal, and it won't make him safer even in the same boat — they're a frog and a scorpion.

This is a thriller where the crisis works beautifully on more than one level due to its choice of hero; rather than the usual former military veteran/law enforcement types, being a male nurse gives Samuel's plight a delicious layer of irony. It's both fun and tense to see a guy whose job is to save lives turn himself into someone who injures and hurts others in order to save his wife, and who in his association with a notorious criminal, may slowly be slipping into the underworld much more than he would ever like. It's equally fun to see the villains who are corrupt cops able to operate in broad daylight under a complete veneer of legitimacy, and even use part of the police station as their hideout for their criminal activities.

What makes the plot so involving on more than one level is that the crisis the hero encounters is not merely about his wife, but also existential, in the sense of how he's having every conception of himself taken away from him as a decent citizen and caretaker and has to resort to violence. Roschdy Zem wisely plays his criminal mastermind as a character none too sympathetically; the corrupt cops and one percenters may have framed him for a crime he did not commit, but one gets the feeling that despite his air of camaraderie and loyalty with his fellow criminals, one never doubts that he can turn on even the closest ally in a split second for his own survival.

These nice twists on the standard characters make this an above-average thriller. It's briskly paced, short and an interesting little diversion as far as thrillers go, and certainly the film to watch if you wanna see an everyman take on the one percenters and their allies in uniform.