Ayisha Issa

  • L’appât [The bait] (2010)

    L’appât [The bait] (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Crime comedies are very close to being the platonic ideal of French-Canadian summer blockbusters, and it’s not that surprising to see the producers of the film look for a transatlantic crossover in L’appât by asking noted French-Canadian superstar Guy A. Lepage to star alongside French comedian Rachid Badouri. Clearly aiming for a large audience, writer-director-producer Yves Simoneau (in a surprising return to cinema screens after decades working in television) bets everything on accessible action-comedy. But does he succeed? That depends on your tolerance for broad, almost intentionally stupid execution. The narrative hook of pairing a dumb gaffe-prone municipal cop (Lepage) with a near-flawless special agent (Badouri) is promising, but Simoneau makes the French-Canadian character an exasperating grade of weapons-grade stupid with few redeeming traits, and the film has to carry that on its shoulders for the entire running time. It doesn’t help that Lepage plays the character like in a sketch comedy which doesn’t fit into the world of the film. Badouri comparatively does better, but the script is at the other character’s level. (At least we get to see striking Montréal-area actress Ayisha Issa in a small role.) It all feels like a waste of talent and resources, especially given how the film’s technical credentials shine whenever there’s a bit of action on-screen. But in the end, L’appât is not an action movie: it’s a broad-spectrum comedy, and it doesn’t quite succeed all that well at it. Sure, there are a few laughs… but they’re either accidental or guilty ones.

  • The Hummingbird Project (2018)

    The Hummingbird Project (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) It’s amazing how many highly specialized spheres of our modern world end up being featured in mass-market entertainment. It may be even more amazing to see how French-Canadian writer-director Kim Nguyen has gone from elliptical fantasy debut Le Marais to Hollywood-grade techno-thriller The Hummingbird Project. Here, Nguyen tackles the business of laying cables from one financial power centre to the other to facilitate High-Frequency Trading, a business in which millions or billions can ride on fractions of a second. Any conceivable way to shaving a fraction of a millisecond in between transactions can be a massive market advantage, and so the film focuses on a pair of entrepreneurs (Alexander Skarsgård playing someone on the autistic spectrum, and Jesse Eisenberg in his familiar alpha-nerd persona), leaving behind their previous company to build a fibre-optic line. Hollywood used to make grandiose movies about building railroads, and The Hummingbird Project could have headed in that direction … alas, this being the enlightened no-fun 2010s, Nguyen isn’t about to let us have any civilization-building fun: The film takes great pain not only to point out that this fibre line is going to be used for rainforest-killing lucrative purposes, but goes out of its way to punish its characters through various ailments and ultimately make their efforts redundant. That’s really too bad, because for a while The Hummingbird Project does create a powerful illusion of an upbeat big-infrastructure project. Nguyen effectively uses his budget to give us a glimpse of what it takes to create the modern infrastructure upon which the Internet rests, and the scope of the film feels vertiginous at times as our characters negotiate with homeowners for property rights, head into swamps to lay down the fibre despite natural obstacles, and overcomes many difficult odds along their way. That’s the kind of triumph I would have liked to see along the lines of railway-building epics, but that’s not what the film is interested in. I still had a decently good time along the way. While I think that Skarsgård’s character is overexposed, I’m comfortable with the kind of fast-talking smart guy played by Eisenberg, and Michael Mando is a bit of a revelation as the level-headed one in the lead cable-layer trio. (French-Canadian actress Ayisha Issa also shows up in a small but striking role—I hope this turn promises more from her.)  This being said, I can’t deny that much of The Hummingbird Project’s appeal rests with a vengeful character magnificently played by Salma Hayek in a white-haired bespectacled performance oscillating between sexiness and pure evil—no matter her age, she’s still got it. Still, Hayek can’t be in all of the film’s scenes and so I’m left with a disappointment—a film that has about three-quarter of what it takes to deliver something exceptional, but seem content to retreat in anti-technological platitudes about slowing down.

  • Brick Mansions (2014)

    Brick Mansions (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2015)  Action-hero actor Paul Walker didn’t get much respect while he was alive, but his untimely death in late 2013 did much to make critics re-evaluate his solid everyman persona and how he could almost singlehandedly raise the level of even the most hum-drum production.  Brick Mansions is a good example of his skills: While the film itself isn’t much more than a routine americanized remake of French action thriller Banlieue 13, (starring parkour legend David Belle in the same role than in the original), it does seem a bit better than it is thanks to an earnest, core-persona performance by Walker.  The parkour action seems dialed-down from the original (Bell is almost a decade older, and Walker is no specialist) but the film throws in a car chase and a few other action beats to keep things interesting.  The plot, with its walled-off city and nuclear redevelopment plot, barely made sense in the French original and seems even more ludicrous on American soil, but that’s to be expected with Luc Besson writing the script.  Still, a few interesting performances are worth mentioning: Aside from Walker and Belle’s turns as protagonists, RZA is fine as a crime lord and Montréal-born Ayisha Issa makes a striking impression as a capable henchwoman.  Otherwise, much of the film blurs into an indistinct mass of running, gunplay, fights and chases.  Walker may not have been a fine dramatic actor, but he was exceptional at playing a likable action hero, and it’s in mediocre movies like this one that this talent is best appreciated.