Sadly Over-hyped

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

There's only one real drawback with this wonderful french film which is GUARANTEED to please internationally : it is slow to start ; so please take patience with the first twenty minutes because when action comes in, it will step up, and up, and up and UP NON STOP TO THE VERY END! And to what end! take lessons, Hollywood! For the rest, what can I say? This film is guaranteed to put you up to the edge of your seat, your heartbeat will accelerate, your tension will shoot up, rarely a film makes you participate so much.The actors play the way we would like their Hollywood counterparts to play, the shooting is sharp, the settings and photography spot on ; everything in this film is nervous, edgy, hard-boiled yet credible.Enjoyment and thrill guaranteed, if it weren't for the slow start i'd have rated it a 9

For an action movie I rate this as 8. I rarely touch 9 or 10, but this came close to 9. Someone mentioned the "action purity" of the film. He was right, no useless background stories, not much of a dialog and no cry-for-me ending. A lot of action, Counter-Strike like, with good overall strategy (except for the bad guys, but when did the bad guys ever had good strategy? :) ).There were some bad parts in this movie: First of all the only "celebrity" actor here is the guy from Taxi, Samy Naceri, and his role is rather small, even if performed well.Then there is the stupid mass attack of the bad guys, who somehow managed to get a whole army with weapons and unlimited ammo in France, then they decided to kill most of it.Third and last is the "badness" of the bad guy, who was brought to justice (oh, the cliché) because he raped hundreds of women. Somehow, rape became more atrocious than brutal beatings, then more terrifying than murder and soon it will probably become more evil than terrorism. Come on! Conclusion: a good, fast-paced, adrenaline-rush French flick, worth watching.

I was annoyed when I learned that they were doing a remake of "Assault". When the movie came out, I knew I was right.Then I saw this movie here on TV. Didn't really know what it was about, just saw that it starred Naceri of "Taxi" fame, so I decided to watch it.From the moment everybody gathered in the warehouse, I instantly thought of "Assault".Some others here seem not to have a clear remembrance of Carpenter's movie, but apart from a few new gadgets all the key plot points are completely the same. I won't give them away, as they would be major spoilers, but try to watch both movies together and you'll see.But on the other side: This is a fine remake. You don't know who's gonna die, there are some interesting new plot points and the characters are believable (in "Assault", you learn nothing about the man they want, as he'snot talking any more. The Mafia guy is quite another quality...) I say, 8 of 10.

Watching THE NEST I was reminded in quite a few ways of DIE HARD, which I consider to be the archetypal action movie. Very pure of focus, very lean and taught and *incredibly* intense. It's been a long time since a movie kept me on the edge of my seat like this one.The premise is very simple. A group of special forces soldiers are escorting a mafia head to trial when they're attacked by his men and take refuge in a warehouse. As luck would have it, a gang of thieves choose the same night to rob the same warehouse, and they get caught in the crossfire.Once the groups of characters are introduced, it's not long before the bullets start flying... and flying, and flying and flying. It's almost non-stop action for the rest of the film, and easily outdoes HARD BOILED for bullet count. I'm sure some people will find this very boring, so if intense adrenalin-inducing action isn't one of your things then skip the rest of this review (and the film). The rest of you, skip the rest of this review and go rent/buy/acquire this film. Hollywood only wishes it could make an action film this pure or this exciting these days.As regards purity (since I've mentioned it twice), this means that the film focusses on building intense action, and doesn't let itself get distracted with other concerns, except in a few cases. The characters are given just enough development to let us know who they are, and pretty much no back story. One character in particular seems like he must have a story to tell, but all we learn is that he was once a fireman. There was surely more to him than that, but it's kept a mystery. Maybe that's a good thing, but I'd have liked to know a little more. A few times the movie teases you into thinking there's going to be a twist, and you say to yourself "Ha, I see what's coming later", but the plot remains refreshingly twist-free. It doesn't need them, so it doesn't have them. Pure.It's just a shame that Hollywood's marketing machinery has such an iron grip on the world's cinema distribution that junk like Alien vs Predator will be seen by millions of people, and a movie as good as THE NEST will remain inexplicably classed as "Indie" or "Arthouse", even in its home country.