BASTILLE DAY is a solid action thriller made as a collaboration between Great Britain and France. I watched it under the ludicrous re-titling THE TAKE. Essentially this is a film in the style of intense French action cinema like MEA CULPA, with an added British cast doing American accents. The accent thing can be distracting in places but is far from horrendous as you'd expect. This is a short and snappy thriller with an interesting story enlivened by some great action sequences. My only real problem with it is that it doesn't have the drive and momentum it needs to make it a truly great film. The action bits are highlights and very well directed and edited, but outside of the action the story feels a little slower and more unfocused.

Idris Elba is a suitably hard-hitting hero and given solid support from a likable Richard Madden, here breaking out from GAME OF THRONES. I could have done without Kelly Reilly, however, whose extraneous character seems to have been added in purely because the director previously made EDEN LAKE. Speaking of James Watkins, he's previously only been known for horror fare like THE WOMAN IN BLACK, but he make a good transition to thrillers here. BASTILLE DAY peaks early on with a thrilling rooftop chase which goes above and beyond and features enhanced sound effect design to make it one of the best I've ever seen, and the film remains fitfully exciting and watchable to the end, despite a heavy-handed political agenda in the script and various clichés in the story.

Michael Mason (Richard Madden) is an American pickpocket in Paris. Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon) is an anti-fascist who is recruited to place a bomb in an empty right wing party building. Sean Briar (Idris Elba) is a reckless CIA agent assigned to Paris. The three are pulled into a conspiracy to heighten the political atmosphere for a Die Hard scheme.

This proves to me that Idris Elba could have been a great Bond. The story is a good convoluted thriller. The only thing missing is a truly fun buddy chemistry. Madden needs to be a little funnier to make the pairing better. I'm reminded of 48 Hrs or various other odd couples. This is not quite up to that level. It's not as fun but it's a solid thriller.

Granted, the inside bank heist plot is implausible in 'Bastille Day', but the director James Watson paces the film so well with non-stop tense moments, and taps Idris Elba innate tension-building talents and ability to deliver quick dialogue (as he does with Sorkin's trademark banter in 'Molly's Game'),that one overlooks the spectacularly unrealistic story of the intended heist.

This is a pure entertainment escapism - an action film that does not pretend to be more than it is.

Therefore, I'm giving two thumbs up