SENTINELLE. Walking-and-talking action movie

Sentinelle is a good title for a tense action thriller. And when the lead role is played by a woman, the film becomes even more intriguing, since the fair sex so rarely appears in this genre as protagonists. I was therefore waiting for its premiere with anticipation. Still, I was a bit worried about the runtime — 80 minutes (actually closer to 75).

Netflix used to be known for rather short films, which often affected the quality of their plots. I thought those days were over. But rationally speaking, it would take a true cinematic miracle for Sentinelle to be a successful production. In this form, I can treat the film, directed by the little-known Julien Leclercq, at best as a sketch of a bloody revenge thriller — one that does have some decent foundations.

In Sentinelle, the strong female lead — a French Army sergeant — is played by Olga Kurylenko. It’s hard to shake the impression that both she and the filmmakers were inspired by Red Sparrow and Atomic Blonde, and by the performances of Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron in those films. However, unlike those examples of stories where a woman takes revenge on men in the name of social justice, Kurylenko’s character is unstable, bland, full of contradictions — so cold and emotionally closed off from the viewer that it’s impossible to like her.

Something already feels off at the very beginning of the production, when — before the film’s title even appears — we’re shown a sort of war-themed prologue. Through it, we’re introduced to Klara, a promising soldier experienced in combat. During one of her missions, she goes through a traumatic event: the son of a wanted terrorist, a boy no older than ten, blows himself up before her eyes, killing one of her comrades. Klara is wounded, but the worst damage is done to her psyche.

The prologue ends there. We can already assume that Klara is a complex, troubled character who will later have to confront the deeply buried trauma of post-traumatic stress disorder. A solid start, actually. Perhaps the battle sequences lacked a bit of dynamism, and Klara wandered too slowly among the ruins, as if she were a bulletproof ghost — but overall, it seemed promising. I had the impression that Olga Kurylenko would eventually unleash some meaty, high-octane action on screen.

Unfortunately, after the prologue — when I expected opening credits, short or otherwise — the picture suddenly turned black and white, and viewers were served a quasi-documentary segment about the important role of the French military in locating and eliminating terrorism in France and beyond. Moreover, the filmmakers decided to define what “Operation Sentinelle” actually is — including the start date, the meaning of the title, and the number of soldiers involved in daily missions. The entire atmosphere built by the prologue immediately collapsed, replaced by a bland patriotic tribute to France’s anti-terrorist efforts. To be clear, I don’t mean to criticize the French army for protecting its citizens. Terrorists should be eliminated, not negotiated with. But such a directly presented message reeks of cheap propaganda. After all, I’m watching an action movie — a gritty thriller — not a TV documentary about how France fulfills its duties in the fight against global terrorism.

After this introduction, the action-film mood never returned. Instead, we got an almost peripatetic wandering of Olga Kurylenko across the screen — accompanied by dreamy gazes, extremely monotonous camera work, and the occasional sudden burst of action in the form of two major fight scenes and a short lesbian sex sequence, which only further muddied Klara’s characterization.

There’s also an antagonist — always seen from a distance, appearing briefly when strangling someone, in the final fight, and in his own death scene. Yes, those are spoilers, but Sentinelle is the kind of film where it hardly matters — everything is obvious from the start. Anyone who’s seen a few action movies will recognize every trope here. The villain’s death is no surprise whatsoever.

The film doesn’t miss the opportunity to portray Russian oligarchs as evil men who exploit women and evade justice. Combined with the film’s flashy opening sequence, this feels like a symbolic jab at Putin — one he’ll never notice, of course — but Western Europe seems to feel obliged to make such empty gestures, as it has done many times before, even toward our own country. The entire world is shown as being under the thumb of these Russian mobsters, and only the lone avenger Klara can deliver justice to a brutal rapist.

The director clearly didn’t have much time to show even these simple plot elements. There’s no chance to get to know the protagonist as a person. The supporting characters are cardboard cutouts — we don’t even remember their names. For more than half the movie, they just drift across the screen, staring blankly at what’s happening around them. And when something finally does happen, the movie is already over. Even some of the fight sequences feel sluggish. It’s clear that Olga Kurylenko isn’t a master of hand-to-hand combat. And for a soldier, she shoots remarkably little.

A walking-and-talking action movie — dull, pretentious, and devoid of energy. That’s the best way to sum up Sentinelle. There may have been an idea behind it, but the execution falls flat. I can only recommend it to viewers exceptionally tolerant of the low quality typical of Netflix’s action films.