Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

This is a release by a company called Christal Films, a Quebec company and Lion’s Gate partner.  One thing about this DVD set is that there are no English subtitles anywhere.  There are no subtitles, period.  So unless you understand French or are as crazy about movies as I am, I suggest right now you look for a version of this movie with subtitles if you want to see it.  Region 1.

disk 1:
Movie
I was just looking around the video store and saw this French movie that had a 2-disk set.  I didn’t know what it was about.  Reading the back of the case didn’t help me much, but I decided to rent it out of curiosity.  I’d never heard of it before, and I wondered why this movie had a 2-disk set.  I’m very glad I rented this thing.  It’s about two groups of robbers with varying degrees of seriousness that, through various circumstances, meet up in a warehouse, where they become stuck and have to fend off many, many gun-wielding men who want what one of the groups have.  It sounds kind of vague, and may sound confusing, but it’s the best I can do without giving away too much.

Another reason why it may sound odd to describe is because there’s pretty much no dialogue for the first 50 minutes or so.  The entire setup of the plot is done with visuals.  It’s very intriguing at first, because you’re not really sure what’s going on or why it’s going on.  It becomes clear enough soon enough, and, at the 50-minute mark, the fun begins.

The weakness of the script is the drama aspect.  For about twenty minutes, the character part takes over.  It’s not boring or badly done, it’s just that after almost an hour of setup and virtually no character development, you want the action to keep up.  The people involved don’t seem to be as important as the situation they’re in.  For those 20 minutes or so, though, the characters are slowly explored.  Being that there’s not much dialogue in the first part of the movie, what the people say become really important when they do talk.  Listening to the commentary and the interviews, you get a sense that the director seemed too ambitious about his characters.  He seemed to think that there was more than there actually was.  Bits and pieces of history are scattered throughout the movie, but they may go unnoticed.

I suppose the director decided to rely on human decency.  Even though some people aren’t morally perfect, you can still see their human side.  No one is immune from death in this movie.  It worked well.  While watching the movie with my brother I said, ‘the interesting thing at the end is seeing who’s going to live’.  All the characters may or may not live through the night, and you don’t really know who will survive and who won’t.  For an action movie, that’s kind of rare.

The claustrophobic warehouse the people are stranded in offers up very nice setups.  The bad guys swarm around like insects and offer up some very nice targets.  Indeed,  the literal title of this movie is ‘nest of wasps’.  Their gear was designed to look like wasps.  It’s kind of funny, actually.  The action and editing are very well done.  If you pay attention, you know what’s going on and who’s attacking who and whatnot.  I was impressed with the amount of intensity that was conveyed throughout the movie.  The suspense keeps rising and rising.

This movie is very well done.  The action is intense, and even though the characters aren’t developed as well as they could, you still want the good guys to win.  It’s a very fun movie to watch.  It should be enjoyable to any action enthusiast.  Well worth watching.

Commentary by director/co-writer Florent-Emilio Siri
I didn’t really like this track.  Mr. Siri talks at length about everything in the second disk, so you’d think he’d have things to say during this track, right?  Well, he basically repeats exactly what’s happening on screen.  Apart from that, he says very little.  He says that he wanted the look of 1930s noir movies, that westerns had a big influence on this movie, he points out which scene was auditioned for Nadia’s character and talks about elastic time.  That’s it.  Other than those things, he says what’s happening.  Oh, yeah, elastic time is time stretched to heighten anticipation.  It’s a very bland commentary track, sort of like the ‘Gladiator’ one.

Bande annonce (Trailer)
This is almost 2 minutes long and is very well done.  It sells the movie well and hints at the plot.  A lot of the trailer is devoted to character stuff, which is kind of odd – Hollywood would never have marketed the movie this way.

disk 2:
This disk has almost 3 ½ hours of extras (say, 207 minutes), and is divided into four parts: production, interviews, tools and action.  Here goes:

La Production (The Production)
Le Producteur (The Producer)
This almost-4 minute features has the cast and crew talking about he producer.  They talk about how important he is and how nice he is.  You then have the producer talking about the project.  It’s nice and interesting.  You rarely have a glimpse of the producer on DVDs, so I suppose this is a nice inclusion.

Le Story-board (The Storyboards)
This lasts 29 minutes and 14 seconds, and has the director talking about storyboards, how important they are and how much easier they make his job.  The next 25 minutes or so are taken to show you two split-screens of storyboards, and the finished movie.  The first split-screen is the storyboards taking the main part of your screen with the movie taking up a small space in the top right corner of your screen.  The second split screen is the same thing only their positions are reversed.  They show important action sequences.  The storyboards are pretty much what ended up on screen except for small differences in camera angle and other small details.  They’re very well done and very understandable.

Akhenation/Desplat
Akenation is a French rapper and Alexandre Desplat is the film’s composer.  As you might expect, this feature explores their work on the end credit song.  It has Mr. Desplat talking about Akenation and shows Akhenation at work recording the song.  The director comes in and talks about his inspiration for the song (he gave a concept to the rapper, who then wrote the song).  Nice work, as the end credit song isn’t usually focused on.  It’s 6 minutes and 18 seconds long.

Les Effects spéciaux numériques (The Digital Special Effects)
This is a bit longer than 5 ½  minutes.  The special effects in this movie are very subtle, so it was very interesting to see what they were.  (Anything you see on a monitor is a special effect.)  You’re shown split screen of four images at times showing the original plate and various stages of the effects work.  The special effects supervisor comes in and talks about why certain shots used special effects and not physical effects (like real fireworks).  He and the director are interviewed and they talk about all the CG shots that were created.  Some of the effects are kind of obvious but others were surprising.  Very interesting feature.

La Musique du film (Film Music)
This is slightly longer than 5 minutes, and has the director and composer talking about the music.  The composer talks about the score and his intention.  He also talks about how the director uses the music in this movie.  The director talks about the use of music and its importance.  He also talks about how he uses th music in the movie.

La Post-synchro (Looping)
This is almost a minute and a half, and has the director giving out advice to the actors during looping sessions.  He’s also interviewed and talks about why the scenes were looped.  Okay features for, once again, something that is rarely seen.  (Looping is re-recording dialogue after the movie is done, usually because the audio is not good enough to understand what’s being said.)

Les Entretiens (Interviews)
Benoît Magimel (6:14), Pascal Greggory (9:52), Nadia Fares (9:08, cute girl), Sami Bouajila (7:22) and Samy Naceri (6:43, who starred in all those ‘Taxi’ movies) get interviewed.  All of these sections have behind the scenes footage.  They all have the director talking about the character and actor.  They all have the actors talking about their characters as well.  It’s all very interesting, although sometimes the actors seem to see things that aren’t really there.  Mr. Bouajila says his character is full of paradoxes.  I didn’t really see that.

Les Outils (The Tools)
Les Personages (Characters)
The director spends about 3 ½ minutes going through all the characters.  He talks about who they are and their look.  There are a lot of production stills.  It’s a nice feature.

Les Armes (Weapons)
This features lasts almost 6 ½ minutes long.  It talks about all the different guns from the movie.  The director talks about the characters and why they have the guns they have.  He also talks about the choice of guns more generally.  He wanted to be on the edge of science fiction, so some new weapons were designed and used by the weapons master.  There are also ample shots from the set.  Very interesting to see what these people came up with.

L’Enjambeur
This is almost 4 ½ minutes long.  The movie features some sort of high-legged rig on wheels that’s used to move things around.  It was built for this movie.  The crew talk about this gizmo and some construction shots are shown.  The director talks about his intention for this giant gadget (had to look like a bug, basically).  The thing’s designer also talks about it.  The actor that rides in it give his two cents about this machine, also.  There’s not really else like it so it was fun to hear about it.

Les Cascades torches (The Fire Stunts)
This is just about 4 ½ minutes long.  There are a few fire stunts in the movie.  This piece explores those stunts.  You have the physical stunt coordinator talk about the difficulties and how the stunts were done.  You see some behind the scenes footage, some rehearsal footage and some movie footage.

Les Masques IL: intensificateurs de lumières (Night Vision Goggles)
The director and designer talk about the mask.  They go through the initial idea, its evolution and the final product you see.  It’s interesting.  The mask is very different from what’s usually shown because of its insectoid appearance.  It’s nice to know how the filmmakers came up with it.  It’s 6 minutes and 12 seconds long.

Les Cascades motos (The Motorbike Stunts)
There’s one big motorcycle stunt sequence in the movie.  This 3 ½-minute feature looks at how it was accomplished.  The director and stunt coordinator talk about the stunt and the stuntman.  You’re also treated to some behind the scenes footage and the final product.  I’m guessing the stuntman is insane.

La Création machinerie (The Mechanical Creations)
This is 2 minutes and 14 seconds long.  Some of the machinery was built, like the rig-thing from above.  You just get to hear the director talking about these things and their point.  (Look like a bug, dammit!)  As interesting as anything else in this section.

Le Carnyx
This is 2 minutes and 46 seconds long.  I have no idea about the English translation of this thing.  A carnyx is an odd-looking musical instrument used to symbolize the bad guys.  You have the director and composer talking about why this instrument was chosen.  Then it moves on to the player talking about his experience.  If you don’t know this instrument, don’t worry.  The guy playing it is apparently the only carnyx player in the world.

Les Impacts (Bullet Hits)
This is 4 minutes and 17 seconds long.  It has the pyrotechnics people talking about squibs, basically.  That’s basically it.  There’s one big scene in the movie that involves a bunch bullet hits in about 10 seconds.  The director talks about the scene and describes how he’s shooting it.  Six cameras with varying speeds and using various lenses.  It’s nice to watch the behind the scenes footage of this sequence.  At the end, you see the scene from the movie.

Les Scènes coupeés (Deleted Scenes)
This has the director talking about why certain scenes were cut, then those scenes are shown.  Looking at them, they don’t add much, so it was kind of obvious why they were taken out.  They mostly concentrate on character stuff.  This lasts almost 6 minutes.

Le Bêtisier (The Joker)
These are outtakes and jokes and silly things that happened on set.  It’s funny, but some of it seems funnier if you were there.  It’s 4 minutes and 18 seconds long.

L’Action (The Action)
La Ruche (making-of)  (lit. The Hive)
This is more or less a documentary on the making of this movie.  It’s 52 minutes and 14 seconds long.  All the actors talk about their characters.  Some talk about what made them take the role.  The director talks at length about the characters and everything else.  What the actors say is pretty much repeated from what’s in their interviews (if they are interviewed).  The pyro and stunt people are also repeats.  The feature goes through the actors and their characters, the action and at last focuses on the three big action sequences.  There is a lot of behind the scenes footage in here.  It’s pretty much nothing but that.  Interviews are interspersed here and there.  It’s very well made but kind of repetitive if you’ve seen the other extras.

60 plans en 2 jours (60 Shots in 2 Days)
At one point in the shoot, these guys shot 60 shots in 2 days.  The director talks about the experience and how they prepared for this.  (They shot out of sequence.)  It’s a very crucial scene, so you wonder why they rushed through it like that.  In any case, there’s a lot of behind the scenes and rehearsal footage for this thing.  It’s very interesting, but I would’ve preferred more explanation of the setups.  It totals 9 minutes and 16 seconds.

Les Actions techniques avec Benoît Magimel (Benoît Magimel’s Stunts)
This is a little over 7 ½ minutes.  It has Mr. Magimel talking about his stunts.  How he prepared for them and what emotions his character goes through and whatnot.  The director and the stunt coordinator come in and talk about Mr. Magimel and how the stunts should be done.  You guessed it: rehearsal footage and behind the scenes stuff are also included.  At the end, you see what ended up being in the movie.  Interesting.  It’s not always you hear an actor talking about his stuntwork beyond saying how good it was working with the stunt coordinator.

Séquence 184 avec Sami Bourjila (Scene 184 with Sami Bouajila)
This slightly longer than 3 ½ minutes.  The first part of scene 184 was shot, then four weeks later the last part of that scene was shot.  In here, you have the director talking about Mr. Bouajila and how he has to prepare.  You also have Mr. Bouajila talking about how he has to find the same emotion he had some 4 weeks earlier.  There are also rehearsals, behind the scenes and the final product in here.  It’s nice because you get to see an actor prepping for a pretty intense scene.

Les Actions techniques avec Nadia Fares (Nadia Fares’ Stunts)
Just like the one with Mr. Magimel, this has Nadia Fares talking about her stunts.  Once again, behind the scenes footage of rehearsals and the movie scene are shown.  Once again the stunt coordinator comes in and talks about the stunts.  Good, and I enjoyed this one more than the other one given that Miss Fares is more easy on the eyes than Mr. Magimel.  It’s a little longer than 4 minutes.

Audio
I had to content myself with the 2.0 track, but there’s obviously a 5.1 track to listen to.  The 2.0 track did its job wonderfully.  There were some very nice surrounds and directional effects.  You got a very good environment even on two speakers.  The dialogue was always clear.  The score was always clear.  The bullets and explosions were also always clear.  The sound was very good, even on two speakers.

Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The video is great.  There isn’t really any grain.  The colours are kind of faded, but that’s what the director was going for.  The separation is terrific.  There’s no bleeding, and the picture is crystal clear all the way.  The black level is very strong also.  I didn’t notice any specks or other types of imperfections, either from the print or from the transfer.  Great picture for the movie.

28/5/2003