While La Cage will have a season 2, MMA continues to be a scripted backdrop for French-language Netflix productions since the streaming platform releases KO, a feature film full of high-octane promises that intends to give us our dose of action for the weekend.
The film allows us to reunite with director Antoine Blossier, who had disappeared from the helm of a feature film for seven years, and his Rémi sans famille, but above all offers the leading role to MMA fighter Ciryl Gane. This is the second time that the heavyweight has attempted his reconversion to the screen after shining in the role of the furniture in L.O.L. Season 5. Sorry Ciryl, we love you Ciryl. What's KO's story? Since causing his opponent's death in the octagon, Bastien has given up MMA and leads a secluded life. When his former rival's widow comes to ask him for help finding her missing son, Bastien can't refuse. Meanwhile, policewoman Kenza (Alice Belaïdi) is also trying to find the boy, the only witness to a crime committed by one of Marseille's most dangerous gangs, also on the young man's trail. Bastien and Kenza, without support, will quickly collaborate in a race against time outside legal channels.
Defeat by KO?
From the first minutes, our survival instinct is put to the test when we are forced to realize that Gane's career change will not be a long, quiet river and that the colossus still has a long way to go. Fortunately for us, we quickly realize that he is not the only one suffering in the story, since no other member of the cast, even among the most experienced, seems comfortable in their own skin.
Faced with acting direction that one might assume is below the needs, the actors are content to dive headlong into the cliché of their characters and we are thus given the choice between overacting or not acting, never a happy medium. Without a safety net and without much experience, we can clearly see that Gane has a thorn in his side and he seems completely lost from one scene to the next. And yet, we recognize that he tries to put his all into it with a lot of desire and will. What doesn't work today could perhaps work tomorrow, as long as we don't rush things with the guy. Within a better story, for example.
The scenario itself could have come from the mind of a contemporary Olivier Marchal, a bad Olivier Marchal, based on corruption, drugs, gangs, and cops very bored by legality. Obviously, the action could not take place anywhere other than Marseille, the cinematic capital of baby crime. Afterwards, we won't take away from him the fact that Blossier, also a screenwriter, knows that his story is only incidental and doesn't make the thing last more than 90 minutes. Which is still long enough considering the freewheeling dialogues in the mouths of bipedal caricatures that are increasingly ridiculous from one scene to the next.
You will have understood, at this stage, KO is not the sharpest knife in the Netflix catalog and is just trying to surf on algorithmic trends, just to make ends meet for everyone and justify the French accounting of the SVoD service. If only he were generous in action...
A damaging lack of generosity since it must be recognized that when Gane and Blossier let loose, we appreciate what we see! It seems that nightclubs inspire filmmakers, since after Ravage – always at the top of the action sequences – KO also plays the card of settling scores under neon for its best scene! Gane can finally justify his check with violent choreography for about fifteen minutes where the blows hurt.
A good piece that is accompanied by another as a conclusion where, once again, we feel that the director and the actor understand each other and, above all, understand what was expected of them. The scenes are edgy, the camera accompanies the movements and the impact of the latter well, and we no longer have any difficulty imagining Gane lugging his giant carcass around in this kind of production in the future. Not an actor yet, but a fighter, we don't say no.
Obviously, more would be needed to make KO a worthy proposition, especially since there is no shortage of films of the genre, whether in theaters with Ballerina or on Netflix itself (The Night Comes For Us, Ravage). Two or three sequences that hit the mark cannot save a majority that systematically misses the mark. Even when you like action cinema. BUT, that's enough to make us remember something nice that saved it from absolute disaster and not want to mess with Ciryl Gane any time soon.
0 Comments