The Takedown review: Lupin’s Omar Sy adds sparks to a standard action movie

French actor Omar Sy is having a moment, and it’s been a long time coming. Since his role as the star of Critical Hit, Sy has been a big hit. The IntouchablesSy spent 10 years in a variety of supporting roles for blockbuster films.X-Men: Days of Future Past Jurassic WorldFrench subtitles are also provided for animated films.The Angry Birds Movie Soul). He was successful in France where he appeared in crime films. The Other Side of the Tracks. But it wasn’t until his lead part as the irresistible, titular gentleman thief in the Netflix heist series LupinHe found another wave.

Now he’s riding that crest as a similarly charming character in a sequel to The Other Side of the Tracks Louis Leterrier’s buddy cop movie The Takedown. In this film, Leterrier’s first French-language feature, Sy returns as Captain Ousmane Diakhité, a rising star in the Parisian police force who gains greater notoriety after he busts an MMA fight, taking down a brawny pugilist in the process, and video of the action goes viral.

However, his crime solving skills are put to the test when a mysteriously decapitated body appears on a train. It’s discovered by Diakhité’s vain former partner, François Monge (Laurent Lafitte). In spite of François’s rich cologne and tailored clothes, he’s just a regular officer relegated to a precinct after several attempts to apply for a promotion. He sees this case as his big break, and he teams with Diakhité to venture into a racist French enclave to solve the murder.

Photo: Emmanuel Guimier/Netflix

Leterrier, as a director knows how to have a lot of fun. He’s proven his flair for intricate set-pieces in the manic magic heist movie Let Me See You NowThe movie about martial arts action UnleashedJet Li is an enforcer who was raised by Jet Li to be a canine attack dog. Leterrier mixes dynamic reds and oranges into his compositions to give his action a more fun aesthetic than modern action films like “The Hurt Locker”. The Adam ProjectOr The 355. (Leterrier recently replaced Justin Lin as the director of the Fast & Furious franchise installment Fast X.)

They are also a source of energy. Sy and Lafitte are a team that is open to each other, sharing a positive spirit and exchanging barbs over their careers and love lives. As the narrative progresses these jokes are made more hilarious. In a small town, Ousmane and François team up with local cop Alice (French rock star Izïa Higelin), who’s a bit of a blank slate as a prototypical love interest with very little personality. She barely draws any attention in comparison to flamboyant ladies’ man François and the bewitching Ousmane. Still, the trio mine gags as Ousmane and François compete to prove who’s the better detective.

Sometimes The TakedownIt seems that it is having too much fun. The pursuit of a suspect in a laser-tag maze turns into a chase through a mall. This takes up far too much time. A final race in an orange Jeep across hills, dales, and over mountain passes also loses its fun. There is an exciting 90 minute stretch in between the two hour run. However, too much fat can limit the possibilities.

A film that has so many narrative twists and turns makes it difficult to justify the extra runtime. We know who the bad guy is and what mole will betray Ousmane and François early on in the movie, which leaves Sy and Lafitte to keep the proceedings revved up anyway. Sy is able to handle this load, which is a good thing. His calm, innocent personality delivers the unsteady beats of this script with great ease, even though it relies heavily on gay-panic jokes that are tawdry and poorly developed. And his physicality, as at home in bruising fight sequences as he is in light flirtations with Izïa, raises the question of what kind of James Bond he’d be, if the thought of a French actor playing the English spy wouldn’t make Brits queasy.

Photo: Emmanuel Guimier/Netflix

Surprises are the primary ones in The Takedown These are the results of a playful adventure that trades on heavy political themes. Ousmane is a victim of tokenism in the Parisian police as they attempt to recruit him. For laughs, François laments over how hard it is for a rich, white male to succeed in this world.

Stéphane Kazandjian’s script is often too simplistic to make those racial themes land effectively. The town’s villainous white fascist mayor (Dimitri Storoge) is totemic of the other real-life populist governments sweeping across Europe. In lieu of stronger screenwriting, Storoge plays the mayor broadly as a vile man with terrible intentions — in particular, he wants to rid France of non-white refugees. That goal, while sickening, doesn’t add a particularly palpable sinister edge to the story. This mayor, instead, is an anticlimactic, dull adversary. If more thought was dedicated to these themes, perhaps they’d discover their intended gravity.

Sy and Lafitte are still the dominant characters, despite a few extra red herrings. They give the story a kinetic energy and a loose rhythm, which makes the narrative’s meandering more palatable, even as it fails to break out of the familiar action-flick mold. If you’re missing the days when this kind of broad action crime story had colorful visions and lovable leads, The TakedownIt might offer a temporary relief.

The TakedownNetflix streaming available now