French action movies are a long way from my milieu, but the 100% Rotten Tomatoes score associated with Guillaume Pierret’s Lost Bullet 2 had me intrigued enough to give it a chance, albeit rather reluctantly. While it’s true I’d never seen the first installment (2020’s aptly titled Lost Bullet), and therefore risked confusion, and worse, annoyance, I nevertheless convinced myself that taking this plunge was a good idea.
As the movie queued up, I noticed that the always-elusive perfect Tomatometer score came courtesy of a mere six votes – a realization that forced an instant twinge of regret and a hard examination of my life choices. However, once my initial growing pains were out of the way (roughly twenty minutes of orienting myself to the important characters and plot elements I’d missed in the first film), Lost Bullet 2 quickly shifted itself into an unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable action treat that continuously defied my expectations at nearly every hair-pinned turn.
Managing these exceptions is something I find myself doing whenever sitting down to watch an action movie. I can’t help it. I’ve seen far too many over the years and am rarely impressed enough to remember anything about them more than a week later. At first, Lost Bullet 2 was no exception to this tradition, but what I assumed would be a European Fast & Furious knock-off turned out to be closer to Smokey & the Bandit – with a hint of The Blues Brothers and a dash of The French Connection thrown in to spice things up, if you can believe it. The comedy of these classics might have been missing, but their spirit shined through in ways I never saw coming. Once this realization set in and was accepted as fact, the world of Lost Bullet 2 opened up and was ready to be enjoyed to its fullest potential.
A word of advice: if you decide to watch Lost Bullet 2 without having seen part one (like I did), don’t waste your time agonizing over the plot. Yes, plot is an important aspect of a successful story, but storytelling is a multi-faceted artform that can take on any number of appearances. In the case of Lost Bullet 2, carefully-crafted action sequences take center stage – something that, when done right, has the power to outpace even the most glaring story missteps.
And believe me when I tell you that the action – everything from the car chases to the fight scenes, and even the tense moments in between – is top notch stuff. From the moment Lino (Alban Lenoir) waltzes Marco (Sébastien Lalanne) into police headquarters at the end of the first act, all the way until the final melee in a nearly-deserted country diner, Lost Bullet 2 never stops entertaining. John Woo fans eat your heart out.
In addition, I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to identify with a protagonist who visibly questions his choices, especially after the lifetime of training I’ve received by American action cinema to worship lone wolf anti-heroes who single-handedly topple their sneering, hand-wringing (and often foreign) foes through ever-increasing amounts of brutality, bloodshed, and firepower. To this end, my hope is that Hollywood action directors take a good long look at Lost Bullet 2, then act accordingly to save a dying staple of once-beloved American genre cinema.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.