Fate of the Furious
“With action movies, you must never settle into comfort.” That’s what Rémi Leautier, the producer and Guillaume Pierret’s lifelong friend, said in an interview as Lost Bullet 2 approached. While the two collaborators had long tested their ability to stage fights and high-speed chases in ambitious short films, they were quickly thrust into the spotlight thanks to the surprise success of the first Lost Bullet.
As they tackle a sequel, the challenge is to push themselves into danger, especially now that the duo’s credibility aligns with a more comfortable budget. On that point, Lost Bullet 2 meets the challenge and doesn’t rest on its laurels, all the more so as it playfully revisits the structure of the first installment and reshapes its most important pivots. Now that he has managed to prove his innocence after Charras’ death, Lino (Alban Lenoir, involved and ferocious) becomes a cop himself, aiming to track down the crooks who took everything from him and bring them to justice.
Of course, Lost Bullet 2 doesn’t pretend to reinvent the hard-boiled crime genre (and some dialogue is a bit too scripted…), but the generosity of its approach continually resists the gratuitousness one might expect from its action scenes. You can feel Guillaume Pierret even more in command of his means, especially in how he juggles his references and taps into Europacorp’s lineage, while stripping his film of the gaudy trappings of Luc Besson’s productions.
Dès la première scène d’action, où une maison se retrouve sens dessus dessous au cours d’un mano-a-mano sec et rugueux, Alban Lenoir met en valeur son implication physique, faisant de Lino ce cavalier solitaire mû par un besoin maladif de justice. La violence enfouie dans le personnage se retrouve alors à exploser comme une cocotte-minute au fil des péripéties, à commencer lors d’une baston dans un commissariat qui transcende celle du premier film, et fait grincer des dents lorsque des têtes s’écrasent contre des portières de voiture.
Ça tire à tatanes réelles
Blood-Red Label
But more than that, Guillaume Pierret knows how to maximize this through the film’s distinctly French identity. Until now, few action films have managed to seize the particular character of southern France, with John Frankenheimer’s Ronin as a notable exception. With Lost Bullet 2, its creators lend this charming Occitanie region a certain cachet, whether by hurling cars into the busy streets of Agde, or by playing with its straight, flat roads framed by simple plains and trees.
The very horizontal staging sometimes bears traces of a rural Western, at least until Lino distorts this premise by sending fuselages flying. In Lost Bullet 2, movement fills the frame, but never loses that forward momentum, because its hero is chasing one thing: to restore order in a world gone adrift and to get back on the right path.
From there, the film uses its stakes and its pyrotechnic effects as explosive metonyms for characters jolted in their feelings. A case in point is the bravura sequence in the sewers, where the thwarted love between Julia (Stéfi Celma) and Lino plays out in a pursuit in which police lights cut through the darkness.
Alban Lenoir, toujours au top
To that end, Guillaume Pierret is fully aware that the readability of his action sequences is essential. Lost Bullet 2 sits in the continuum of John Wick-style films, where showcasing real stunts serves to deepen immersion in the editing. While the filmmaker sometimes summons a frenzy that would not have looked out of place in Michael Bay’s heyday, the editing remains always in service of the characters and their place in space. It’s often within a single shot that you’ll see a crash skim another car, or an obstacle loom in Alban Lenoir’s path.
This thrill, this adrenaline, remains the humble but real priority of the team behind the feature, from whom you can sense both passion and obvious craftsmanship, always serving the pleasure of the audience. And in an era when many camera-literates tackle the genre with laziness and cynicism, one can only applaud the film’s genuine love of cinema that shines through Lost Bullet 2.
Lost Bullet 2 has been available on Netflix since November 10, 2022.
