Sleepless Night (2012)

Powerful

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A lot of the reviewers here are apparently very satisfied about Nuit Blanche and that's their right. There is indeed a lot of action and you won't get bored for a second. But there are just too much things that make Nuit Blanche just an okay average action movie. There are some things that don't add up in the movie and some actors are not really that good. I don't know why you should pick a singer like Joey Starr as an actor. Probably because some kids are going to want to watch a movie with him in it but he's just not good enough to act. The action scenes are okay though even though I think that this movie would work much better with Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson instead. All in all it's fine to watch if you have nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon. Don't expect too much though, just plain action with a so so scenario and acting.

If you ever watched Kevin Costner in "No Way Out" and loved it, then watch this upgrade.Wow, wow, wow ! I'll say just one thing : pay real good attention to the dialogues in the kitchen.I intended to watch half this film one night and the rest the next night, as I needed to get up early for work. Forget that !!! This film grabbed me by the throat so intensely I had to watch it till the end and risk a bad day at work.Top notch, from start to finish. The only time you will be able to relax and catch your breath is when you watch the opening credits !

Fantastic film. Really tight action thriller. Very well plotted, and very well executed. I saw another reviewer complain because it was not as action packed as the publicity misled him to believe. It just doesn't feel like an American action flick because it doesn't have famous international stars with overgrown muscles saying lapidary lines every time they shoot a bad guy. I love Die Hard too, don't get me wrong, but this is just a different kind of animal. This is reminiscent of Die Hard only in the high concept (one man against lots of bad guys in a confined environment); the tone is much more realistic and gritty. It's not a shoot them all in which they never run out of bullets either, nor a martial arts extravaganza, but action packed it is: it gets relentless. The action is just grounded. The hero here, or anti-hero, maybe, is not the best shot on earth, and is not stronger or a better fighter than anyone else, nor has any special "movie hero" skills. He's really human; he's just more desperate. But that's what makes the film so raw. The stakes feel real. The fights will have you twisting on your seat, not cheering as the hero makes mincemeat of anyone in his path a la Taken. It is not a wish-fulfillment ride, like most Hollywood action flicks, but precisely for that reason it is a very intense ride. It's really gripping. The plot devices (son in danger, etc) don't come out too cheesy and the actors make their characters very believable. The complexity of the plot is easy to follow despite the lack of expository dialog spoon-fed to the audience. We see what the hero sees, realize what he realizes. We realize indeed how bad the odds are for him and we wonder what could he possibly do, as the situation gets worse and worse. We understand the playground and are challenged to guess how is he going to use it. We get to know all the other characters and why they are desperate too, rising the stakes, and we keep peeling them off in layers, unveiling twists and double crossings in an exercise of one upmanship. They don't round it up with a beautiful bow in the end nor every little subplot is tied up with a saccharine sweet epilogue. It is abrupt enough, not complacent with us, while still delivering the required closure. In my view this just adds to the general grit. I highly recommend this film. It felt fresh. Not recognizing every actor also helped make it feel real. The modern day french setting with immigrants from everywhere also helped provide separation from the US or UK set cop dramas that we are used to watch here in the US. Sorry to rant. I just watched it on Netflix and felt compelled to come to IMDb and learn more about it (I had never heard of it before), and then to write this review.

The latter years I've gotten more and more impressed with French action movies. At least those I've come too see here in Norway, and that's quite a few. I would go so far as saying that the French are now the leading action flick makers, and by far has passed both the Americans and the Brits. The French movies I've seen recently is full of action, we'll played and has a great touch of realism, which very often is not the case with the films coming out of Hollywood.This film, "Sleepless night", is about to be remade in Hollywood I understand, and there's really no wonder why. This is action from start to finish, and the best action I've seen since "Headhunters". It's tight, exciting, down right dirty action, and still very realistically told. It's a drug heist gone wrong, exploding into a nightmare. Many of there has been with corrupt cops, which is a great genre in itself amongst these films. I guess it's a great premise that you don't know who you can trust, or rather, like in this. You know who you can't trust. Anyone!We meet a divorced cop getting into trouble after a rather bad decision. He is seen after committing a theft of a load of drugs. As a direct following if this, his beloved teenage son is kidnapped by the gangster missing their drugs. This starts off a nightmare which you really shouldn't miss!A roller coaster of bad decisions and bad people. Filmed in dirty raw, grainy film, stressed music, with hand-held camera, which I've rarely seen more well done. Not annoying, just realistically adding to the nerve of the story. A treat of a film which sucks you up right from the start. I'll keep checking out French action movies!