1. Sleepless Night
It'd be wrong to call Sleepless Night an action film, though many a film critic rushed to compare it to the likes of a Die Hard or many similar "One man trapped in dangerous location" movies. What it is, instead, is a single suspense set piece, sustained over 90-some-odd minutes. The film grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags you through one insane, unending night in the life of sort-of dirty, sort-of not cop Vincent (Tomer Sisley). After he absconds with a drug lord's cocaine, Vincent is notified that said drug lord has absconded with Vincent's son. Vincent needs to get the drugs, bring them to the night club headquarters of the drug lord, or else the kid comes down with a bad case of lead poisoning. Simple, right? But what director Frederic Jardin does so well is keep piling the problems on top of Vincent, constantly pulling the rug out from under him to drop him into a pit of spikes. And there are snakes among the spikes. And bees, probably. The point is, every time Vincent thinks he's gotten out of trouble, Jardin dumps another irritant on him, keeping the poor guy laboring through the onslaught of pain and woe. It all comes to a head in the film's only real action scene, a fist-fight in the night club's kitchen between Vincent and the really-quite-dirty cop who has cornered him. Like Supremacy's fight, this one benefits from exploiting both the elaborate and intimate possibilities of its setting. Both Vincent and his opponent are good fighters, and the kitchen is loaded with multiple surfaces and possible weapons. But as the director, Jardin never lets the fight become fanciful, using sound design to emphasize the squeak of shoes on the tile floor and grunts and groans of the combatants. The characters are frequently boxed in by the various counters and drawers, upping the feeling of claustrophobia. More, this fight stands out for how deeply entwined it is to the entire flavor and rhythm of the entire film. Sleepless Night is a portrayal of one man being thrown into a Hell of his own creation and having to claw his way out tooth and nail. With this fight, Jardin the director and Sisley the actor take Vincent to his absolute extreme, wailing on him until he must either accept the end or fight back with everything he has. It's a tough spot for the character to be in, but as an audience member, there's no place better.