''Sentinelle'' is a 2021 French

action thriller film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...

directed by Julien Leclercq, written by Julien Leclercq and Matthieu Serveau, and starring

Olga Kurylenko Olga Kostyantynivna Kurylenko (born 14 November 1979) is a Ukrainian-born French actress. She rose to prominence by playing the Bond girl Camille Montes in the James Bond film '' Quantum of Solace'' (2008). Kurylenko began her career modellin ...

, Marilyn Lima and Michel Nabokoff. It is about a French soldier who has returned home from serving in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

traumatized by the experience. After her sister is raped and left in a coma, she uses her military training to seek revenge on the perpetrators.

Plot

Klara serves in

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

in the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...

as an interpreter for '' Opération Chammal''. After the apprehension of a suspected terrorist, she witnesses the man's young son blow himself up at his father's behest with explosives hidden on his body. Traumatized by the blast and experiencing migraine headaches from it, she is transferred home to

Opération Sentinelle Opération Sentinelle is an ongoing French military operation following the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks, with the objective of protecting sensitive "points" of the territory from terrorism. It was reinforced during the November 2015 Pari ...

''. On patrol, her trauma manifests itself in impulsive, sometimes disproportionally violent behavior towards suspects. The painkillers she was prescribed are not enough for her and she begins to buy more illegally. One night, Klara and Tania go out to a nightclub. Tania separates from Klara to join a party of Russians and signals to Klara that she is leaving with them. Klara ends up dancing with a

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

woman, and the two leave the club together and later have sex. The next day she is notified that Tania had been raped and savagely beaten into a coma. Klara starts her own investigation of the crime, inspects the club's security footage, finds out the name of the man Tania was with, and takes a photograph of him in the footage. Captain Muller of the

French Police Law enforcement in France is centralized at the national level. Recently, legislation has allowed local governments to hire their own police officers which are called the ''Municipal Police (France), police municipale''. There are two nation ...

, who is leading the investigation, identifies the suspect as Yvan Kadnikov, the son of Leonid Kadnikov who is an influential and well-connected Russian tycoon. Yvan is hiding out in his father's villa at

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (; ; Italian language, Italian: ''San Giovanni Capo Ferrato'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region in Southe ...

, but both have diplomatic passports and

immunity Immunity may refer to: Medicine * Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease * ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press Biology * Immune system Engineering * Radiofrequence immunity ...

, making them untouchable without a complicated legal process. Unwilling to wait for justice, Klara catches Yvan at the nightclub and he tells her that he had not touched her sister. His friends come to his rescue and Klara is evicted after a fight with them. Later, she infiltrates Leonid's villa to find Yvan, but is captured by Leonid's bodyguards. Leonid taunts Klara, freely admitting that it was he who had raped Tania since his son was not interested in women because he was a homosexual. He leaves her to be drowned by his guards, but Klara fights free and escapes. Tania later awakens from her coma, but decides not to press charges despite Klara's urging her to do so. While outside her sister's hospital room, Klara sees a news report in which Leonid states that he will be returning to Russia soon. She notices a nurse rushing past her and right afterwards Tania has a sudden

embolism An embolism is the lodging of an embolus, a blockage-causing piece of material, inside a blood vessel. The embolus may be a blood clot (thrombus), a fat globule (fat embolism), a bubble of air or other gas (air embolism, gas embolism), amniotic ...

. Suspecting an attempt on her sister's life, Klara pursues and catches and beats up the female assassin. Captain Muller informs Klara that she had been sent by Leonid. Now fully bent on revenge, Klara steals several weapons from her garrison's armory and sneaks into Leonid's hideout. After killing the bodyguards, she pushes Leonid off a bannister when he tries to bribe her, and when she observes his body assumes he's been killed. Klara is stabbed by Yvan and shoots him dead. Seriously injured, she retreats as a tactical police unit arrives. Leonid, however, surprisingly survived the fall and regained consciousness. Three months later, Leonid is in his

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

hotel suite and asks the hostesses for room service. Disguised as one of them, Klara brings him a fruit basket, grabs a fork, and rapidly stabs Leonid several times in the jugular and around the neck with it. She secretly travels back to Nice to check in on Tania from a distance. Tania is hanging out with friends and has physically recovered from her ordeal. After observing Tania without her noticing and seeing that she is all right, Klara walks away, now as a fugitive from the law.

Cast

as Klara * Marilyn Lima as Tania * Michel Nabokoff as Leonid Kadnikov * Martin Swabey as Lieutenant Eric Jaubert * Carole Weyers as Capitaine Catherine Muller * Andrey Gorlenko as Yvan Kadnikov * Gabriel Almaer as Armorer * Antonia Malinova as Maria Kovalev, Klara and Tania's mother * Blaise Afonso as ''Opération Sentinelle'' Soldier * Guillaume Duhesme as Lieutenant Colonel * Michel Biel as Aurélien

Production

Produced by Labyrinthe Cinéma and Umedia, ''Sentinelle'' was filmed over 35 days in November and December 2019, in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, Belgium,

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million Casablanca Casablanca (, ) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Chaouia (Morocco), Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a populatio ...

, Morocco. However, post-production was interrupted by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Critical reception

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, the film has a 70% rating based on reviews from 10 critics, and an average rating of 5.80/10. On the website ''Movie Nation'', critic Roger Moore gave the film an unfavorable review, calling it a "tight but illogical skips-a step-or-three thriller". On the website ''The Last Thing I See'', a review calls the film's plot "lean and spare, without much fat or wasted time" but praises Klara's character development. ''Decider'' reviewer Johnny Loftus says that "''Sentinelle'' balances its beats of emotional trauma against the darker forces of vigilantism. It doesn’t forgive its main character’s drastic actions, but it illustrates...how she got there." ''Vulture'' critic Bilge Ebiri, who quips that this movie is "

John Wick ''John Wick'' is an American media franchise created by Derek Kolstad. It centers on a neo-noir action thriller film series featuring titular character portrayed by Keanu Reeves. Wick is a legendary hitman who is reluctantly drawn back int ...

on the

Riviera () is an Italian word which means , ultimately derived from Latin , through Ligurian . It came to be applied as a proper name to the coast of Liguria (the Genoa region in northwestern Italy) in the form , then shortened in English. Riviera may a ...

", praises the film's "lean, modest efficiency...that knows how to grab your attention and not overstay its welcome." ''Digital Spy'' reviewer Ian Sandwell gives a negative review, stating that "''Sentinelle'' leans heavily on clichés, copious slow-motion shots and lingering silences to highlight Klara's mental state post-war", saying " 's nothing we haven't seen before and contains no depth or exploration of the issues." Sandwell also states that the film gives its lead no "quirks" as a revenge-heroine, other than depicting her as not very good at her one-woman attacks; apart from this, he says "there are no other surprises in store plot-wise as events otherwise play out predictably."

References

External links