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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
View All The Assault News
All Critics (14) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (6)
So gripping and focused that it easily bests Hollywood movies with 50 times its budget.
In place of emotional stakes, we get gleaming, stylized, occasionally slow-motion violence, filmed in such extreme close-ups and cramped spaces that it's impossible to differentiate gunman and victim.
Brisk and technically efficient, The Assault is a dull film based on a real event that certainly wasn't.
Only the overstylized, near-colorless cinematography offers any shades of gray (actually, nothing but shades of gray); everything else is rendered in the most black-and-white way possible.
The Assault is so tense, it seems to pass in a single held breath-so quickly, in fact, that you don't register its narrative flimsiness until later on.
The staging is meticulous.
Shot in black and white, it is well made and helped by copious research.
The kind of serious, adult action movie that the US and UK struggle to make.
A very robust piece of filmmaking with subtle shades of moral complexity to boot.
Curiously lacking in tension.
Exploiting film's visceral, kinetic and pummeling power to the max, this fact-based thriller about the 1994 Algerian terrorist hijacking of a Paris-bound flight is an outstanding achievement in genre entertainment.
Could have been better, had Leclercq resisted to urge to include the soap operatics ... It's solid - but it should have been gripping.
Genuinely surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for this fantastic film. It deserves a lot of love for the way it crafts a tense but realistic thriller. SOmething of a different Christmas movie for me, this recounts the true events of Christmas Eve - Boxing Day 1994, as armed Algerian terrorists take over a plane. We weave in and out of the different facets that must deal with the crisis including those on the plane, the government, and the tactics team that will eventually have to take them down. The film is shot with urgency and perfectly recreates the feeling of dread and despair. Best of all is the historical for this film. People laugh and ignore the woman who believes this to be a suicide mission. Something we most certainly would make our first guess in this day and age. The action is incredible, considering it takes place in such a small space. The climax is repetitive in an invigorating way, as the terrorists and police trade shots without busting out into action heroics. I was completely engrossed by this little gem, which I may make a Christmas regular.
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