15 MINUTES OF WAR Review

A transport loaded with French youngsters is commandeered be equipped with every kind of weaponry local people in 1976 Djibouti —  then the last French colony — so, Bien Sur, a distaff American teacher attempts to chivalrously make all the difference in the action-drama hybrid 15 Minutes of War (L'Intervention: La Naissance du GIGN).

Featured by French-Ukrainian Bond young lady Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace, To the Wonder) as an instructor who's both maternal (at the children) and intense (with the psychological oppressors), this should satisfy more established class fans specifically, although its governmental issues are dangerous.

The salvage mission close by, propelled by a genuine story, doesn't depend just on one female teacher's fortitude yet besides on an exceptional unit of the French gendarmerie. These men —  they were all men, natch — are flown in from Paris explicitly for that reason by an administration fat cat (veteran comic Josiane Balasko, in a flavorful stern appearance). The genuine activity, here driven by computing yet intrepid officer Andre Gerval (Alban Lenoir), would prompt the introduction of what is currently called the GIGN, a Gendarmerie Special Forces unit that is routinely entrusted with precisely the sort of unthinkable mission appeared here. Cinephiles who are into French action films will be acquainted with the GIGN from Julien Leclercq's The Assault, which dramatized the unit's endeavors to spare the travelers of a seized plane, or Mathieu Kassovitz's Rebellion, a hostage drama set in New Caledonia.

Albeit intensely fictionalized here, the story is eminent in contemporary French history because the unique unit entrusted with bringing down the criminals would later turn into the observed GIGN (Le Groupe d'intervention de la gendarmerie Nationale). Right up 'til the present time, the GIGN handles prominent hostage salvage and counter-fear mongering emergencies including the 2015 quest for the Charlie Hebdo executioners.

The pre-GIGN adaptation of the gathering gets this show on the road after unit officer André Gerval (Alban Lenoir) is called to a central command and told that psychological militants in the French colony of Djibouti have seized a school transport with 21 youngsters ready and are requesting France's changeless withdrawal from the district. After a bombed run to neighboring Somalia, the transport is stuck in No Man's Land between the French and Somali fringes. The French government (spoken to by straightforward Josiane Balasko), dreading a bloodbath, advises André to amass his group and, alongside "CIA flower child" Phil Shafer (Ben Cura), head to Djibouti and size up the circumstance while tact runs its course.

This isn't a film about action. It's one about methodology. It isn't about exploitative melodrama. It's about the mechanics of how a salvage activity is arranged (and re-arranged) and inevitably, after a great deal of exchange and discussion and re-thinking, organized. It isn't—maybe to the film's weakness (if simply because the screenplay extensively raises the point)— about the governmental issues of then-colonized Djibouti's history and future, concerning the account's time frame. The main thing that issues to the characters, on the ground and at this time, is sparing the lives of these kids.

Grivois clarifies the operational intricacies and stages the various pieces—from the warriors to the pros, to the thieves, and their reinforcement, all concerning the transport—with clearness. In 15 Minutes of War, we comprehend what's going on with each move, each slow down, and each slug. The movie merits 5+.