TIFF 2011: SLEEPLESS NIGHT Review

You can probably imagine the logistical challenges to making an action driven chase film set almost completely inside a mega-sized night club:  camera placement, sound continuity, controlling the tightly packed horde of extras and communicating the complicated geography of the place to the viewer.  Director Frederic Jardin not only rises to the challenge, but throws laughs heartily in the glory of what is possible with this basic genre concept.  He layers in the sack full of cocaine, a dozen or more mobile phones, changing clothing, and teenage hostage that change locations as often as they change ownership.  The mind reels thinking just how damn well this is executed.  A scuffle in the kitchen involving a baton has the hero opening drawers as he crawls underneath to block from being clubbed, later, a similar trick of opening a series doors in a corridor to block bullets.  These are visually pure images shot with real panache.  The press of flesh and sweat and desperation is palpable as the lines of who is who, who knows what, who is where and where are they headed gets blurry.  This is all dizzy pleasure, akin to the twists and turns of Fabian Belinski's clockwork confidence scheme in Nine Queens or Martin Brest's buddy comedy Midnight Run.  Objects and people travel at high speed through the packed main floor, pounding with French Drum and Bass (or in one great set piece, a DJ mash-up of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust."), into the kitchens, restaurants, corridors, duct work, strong vault, the parking lot (and various vehicles, and several the mens and ladies room.  They are captured from all sorts of strange angles by cinematographer Stern who alternates effectively between both visceral and stately visual strategy.