Bastille Day is a movie from the year 2016. Bastille Day is referring to July, 14th, the national holiday in France. On July, 14th 1789 the Bastille was stormed. The movie is set in contemporary Paris a few days before this national holiday. Michael Mason (played by Richard Madden) picks pockets and is unwillingly involved in a bomb attack, when he steals a woman's bag, in which she hid a bomb. Mason checks the bag quickly and decides that there's nothing interesting in it for him and leaves it. As he walks away, the bomb explodes. The CIA hears of the incident and starts looking for Mason, who they believe to be a terrorist after identifying him through cameras around the buildings where the explosion took place. Sean Briar (played by Idris Elba) is ordered to look for Mason. Briar is from the CIA, but not necessarily a guy playing by the rules himself. Initially both men naturally don't trust each other, but then Briar is willing to work with Mason to find the woman, who had the bag first so they can find out more about the reason for the bomb attack.
Richard Madden is initially shown picking pockets. According to the trivia section on imdb.com for this movie, he actually trained to do this for real.
The movie was released in cinemas on July, 13th 2016 and on July, 14th the terrorist attacks in Paris and Nizza followed. StudioCanal removed all digital advertisements of this movie in Paris and let theatres decide for themselves, if they wanted to keep the movie in their program or not.
The story of the movie, as described above, may at first read like a simple movie at most described as “action movie“. Yes, it is a movie with lots of action, starting with the pursuit when Briar finds Mason, who runs up to the rooftop and on to other rooftops of Paris. To me however the movie is more than just an action movie. When I saw it the first time, it was on tv at around 10 at night and I was fairly tired already. I wanted to just have a quick look into it, to see what this movie was like, that had the French national holiday as a title. That night I didn't just have a quick look into it, I watched the whole movie to the end, because the story was captivating enough for me to make me curious what the reasons for the attack were and how the story would end for both Briar and Mason. I liked the characters. It's not just about the attack. With Mason we have someone innocent, picking pockets, who suddenly has to prove his innocence when everyone else is looking for him, thinking he wanted to execute the attack. The fact that I'm somewhat interested in magic may have helped making Mason more sympathetic for me.
As I watched the movie, I did however ask myself one question repeatedly: The CIA is not a French organisation, Briar is not a Frenchmen, neither is Mason, but the movie is set in Paris, the capital of France, around the French national holiday. Couldn't they have made the movie “fully” French, instead of just using the date of the French national holiday and making the story take place in Paris? That's not at all critisising the acting abilities of Richard Madden, Idris Elba or anyone else in this movie. I'm just thinking that as much as the frame work of the movie is French, why not use French actors for the main characters and some French organisation instead of the CIA? That's a bit sad all in all, nevertheless I liked the characters of Mason and Briar enough to be interested in a “Bastille Day 2” kind of sequel with the two. The movie does have a good and reasonable ending, but especially the future for Mason after all the events of the movie are questionable and I'd have liked to see how things went on for him specifically. I'm not aware that any sequel is even planned though and I doubt that a sequel with those characters will ever come.
