British director James Watkins follows Eden Lake and The Woman in Black with this Parisian thriller about a “reckless, insubordinate and irresponsible” CIA agent (Idris Elba), first tracking and then teaming up with a light-fingered pickpocket (Richard Madden) as terror-fuelled unrest mounts in the run-up to France’s 14 July celebrations. The plot is absurd, but at least Bastille Day sidesteps the xenophobic caricatures of London Has Fallen, preferring to subvert rather than celebrate broiling prejudices. Crunchy fights and a vertiginous rooftop chase crank up the action, while viral videos and hashtagged calls to arms lend an illusion of modernity to the old-fashioned proceedings.
