France
2*
Director:
Julien Leclercq
Screenwriters:
Simon Moutairou
Julien Leclercq
Director of Photography:
Thierry Pouget
Original title: L’assaut
Running time: 85 minutes
A very daring assault of a hijacked Air France aircraft took place Dec. 26, 1994, on runway three of Marignane Airport on the outskirts of Marseille. Broadcast live on national television, images of the successful rescue of the passengers onboard and the neutralization of the hijackers, four members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), made heroes of the SWAT team that carried out the operation.
It would later be determined that the gunmen wanted to redirect the airplane to Paris and send it on a collision course toward the Eiffel Tower. After the Algerian government had nullified the election victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut) in 1991, the latter’s more militant GIA wing tried for years to overthrow the government and install an Islamic State. Algeria sought the help of their former colonial power, and the GIA targeted France in order to make its displeasure known.
These events show enormous potential for either a straightforward action film with a dimension of human drama (think back to the stories of the passengers in United 93, in which the terrorists’ target eerily resembles the one in this film) or a more subtle evocation of the bickering that unfolded in the corridors of power while people’s lives hung in the balance.
Instead, The Assault opts for an awkward three-legged balancing act that, given its running time — a breezy 85 minutes — provides too little information for the viewer to be involved at any level. In fact, some of the main characters are never even introduced by name, and we get no real motivation for the actions of the fighters. The film simply wants us to infer they are bad because they are Islamic terrorists (or, in the parlance of any U.S. politician, “radical” Islamic terrorists). And yet the passengers also remain a vast mass of individuals with whom we cannot possibly relate, except to infer, once again, they are good, simply because they are not Islamic terrorists.
This lack of sophistication in the screenplay is reflected by the film’s colour palette: The images have been desaturated to the point where all we see are shades of blue, black and grey. These colours would suit a post-apocalyptic movie just fine, but in The Assault, where so much depends on the interaction of real people, all of them involved in a struggle for life and death, such cold, alienating colours drain the life from the story.
While the hijackers are waiting, first on the runway in Algiers, then on the runway in Marseille, a French special operations team is preparing to storm the plane. One of the officers is called Thierry, and we know he will have some special role because his wife is always watching the events on the television screen, seemingly in a state of permanent anguish, her face contorted to express her fears as visibly as possible, while she is either sniffing or sobbing in quiet desperation.
The ringleader of the gang of four on the plane is Yahia, though we have no idea what his plan is or whether he has a plan at all: Throughout the film, he seems oddly confused, his non-stop screaming making him appear to be a hysterical nut job driven by emotion rather than ideology.
The third main character is Carole, the always-confident aid at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, who assures things get done even though she gets none of the recognition she deserves. This political power play could have been fascinating, but sadly the film spends little time mulling over its own story.
None of the characters has a back story, and therefore no one’s actions can really be explained — nor can anyone’s demise elicit feelings of sadness or loss from the viewer. We need not sympathize with the terrorists, but some clear motive for their actions would have gone a long way toward our understanding of their mission, aside from the continual cries of “Allahu akbar” (God is great).
Films about terrorists are usually approached with much more circumspection regarding the characters involved and the political or religious driving force behind their actions, but The Assault doesn’t seem very interested in telling its story in a more than cursory way. This is a shame, since similar incidents from the past, from Munich in 1972 to Waco in 1993 and New York City in 2001, have captivated audiences around the world who watched these events unfold live on television.
But we are not captivated, because the characters are remarkably superficial. The story is inherently interesting, but very little thought has been put into its execution, and the result is this sad excuse for a “based on true events” biopic. It should have been made for television.
This is a slightly modified version of the writer’s review that first appeared in The Prague Post.