The Squad: Home Run (2023)

The Squad: Home Run (2023)

A totally derivative action movie that's light on thrills or any sense of urgency

5.0

Movie

France
French
Action, Crime, Drama
2023
BENJAMIN ROCHER
Alban Lenoir, Cassiopée Mayance, Jean Reno
93 min

TL;DR

You've never seen a female character get fridged this quickly and this stupidly.

What it's about

A former policeman, with his teenage daughter in tow, seeks justice for the death of his wife at the hands of a criminal gang.

The take

You don't have to watch (or even be aware of) the The Squad: Home Run's 2015 predecessor to understand this sequel, because there just isn't enough to care about in the film's halfhearted action scenes and rudimentary mystery-solving. Even as it promises an interesting dynamic between ex-cop Niels Cartier (played by Alban Lenoir) and his rebellious teenage daughter Charlotte-Serge (Cassiopée Mayance), these characters fall into cliche too. Rather than have them form a relationship built on their shared grief, all of that feeling is pushed aside for jokes about obvious generational differences. The film is watchable enough (albeit more as white noise than as engaging entertainment) but by the end it all seems pointless—an adventure heading nowhere.

What stands out

The film is at its most interesting when it seems to set up Cartier as an action hero who can't fight. The first big fight scene he gets into alongside his daughter mostly consists of them getting the crap beaten out of them. And this is a good thing, as it promises to re-establish Cartier as a true everyman worth rooting for because of how his courage and persistence. The movie backtracks on this quickly, of course, and depicts him as a stereotypical badass who can defeat armed thugs with nothing but a baseball bat. It was fun while it lasted.

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