French crime drama Bastion 36 – or Squad 36, depending on where you’re logging into Netflix from – starts with a bang, but goes out with an extended whimper. Directed and co-written by Olivier Marchal, it has the look and feel of a mid-2000s Hollywood thriller (down to the frigid color palette), but its clunky cop-corruption plot overwhelms any sense of fun.
Led by Victor Belmondo, Squad 36 kicks off with a propulsive vehicular chase scene in the pouring rain, as the elite police unit of the movie’s title pursues a dangerous crime boss, Karim Mahmoudi (Jean-Michel Correia). This sequence ends in a thrilling stalemate, with undercover officer Antoine Cerda (Belmondo) holding Mahmoudi at gunpoint, but being forced to let him go rather than engaging in a public shootout. As the two part ways, it feels like a promise of more intrigue down the line.
Unfortunately, this turns out not to be the case. Mahmoudi, though he technically factors into the plot, remains absent for much of Squad 36’s runtime, as Cerda follows up on numerous leads surrounding the deaths and disappearances of several of his comrades one year and an unceremonious transfer to a different unit later. The key issue with this transition isn’t so much that Squad 36 shifts focus to a different, mostly invisible antagonist working in the shadows and pulling the strings, but that the way it tells its story grinds any sense of momentum to a halt.
Cerda, who’s involved with his coworker Hanna (Juliette Dol), also has a penchant for getting beaten up during underground, bare-knuckle fights. It’s an intriguing wrinkle to the character, but apart from giving him a consistently scarred and puffy appearance, it adds little to his psychology. The inner lives of the characters seem of little concern in Squad 36, despite much of the plot unfolding in the form of Cerda asking people questions whose answers lead him to even more people to mildly interrogate.
There’s little sense of mystery to the unfolding police saga, other than ballistic evidence pointing towards a cop being involved in a number of recent shootings. Cerda is of a one-track mind in his mission to find out more – the dead and disappeared were his closest allies, after all – but there’s little to actually challenge his sense of self, or his righteous morality, until very late into Squad 36’s two hours and change.
In the meantime, a who’s who of wonderful French actors (like Yvan Attal and Soufiane Guerrab) waltz in and out of scenes to deliver news to Cerda, ask him for updates, or simply assure the audience that things are moving elsewhere, far away from the investigation – all but promising these disparate parts will eventually meet. The further Cerda tumbles down the rabbit hole of corruption, the more he discovers information about what might actually be going on, though none of it is ever presented with subversion or surprise. At the very least, Belmondo (the grandson of iconic French New Wave lead Jean-Paul Belmondo) moves through this plateauing plot with a sense of control and reserve, leaving any potential emotional explosions for more significant moments.
Without its superficial appearance – its cool tones, its slick handheld camera, and its editing that emphasizes information over emotion – Squad 36 wouldn’t move forward quite as neatly, given how flimsy it feels beneath the surface. Its resemblance to a thousand other cop procedurals is both its biggest strength and its ultimate undoing, since it leaves little room for delight or surprise. The one time it attempts to pivot (and to shock), the result is a climactic development that springs up out of the blue, introducing a completely unearned sense of cynicism. Then again, it’s hard to nail a thematic exclamation point when little else in the movie has much to say.