Paris Countdown

Slickly executed with glossy, neon-drenched cinematography and a throbbing techno-music score, Paris Countdown sacrifices substance for stylishness, as has become the distressing tendency of so many recent crime dramas. But its fast pacing, compelling lead performances and frequent doses of action prevent boredom from settling in.

It’s a mildly interesting thriller — Paris through the eyes of a director who doesn’t know how to make its beauty menacing.

Despite the ingredients for a rousing shoot-’em-up (two-timing hit men, a slo-mo shoot-out, chartreuse-filtered scenes in Mexico) it’s hard to buy the leads’ mastery of this world of fist-pumps and violence.

Paris Countdown has style to burn, where “style” means “uses lots of lighting gels and some camera flourishes,” but it doesn’t have a coherent point of view or a solid take on the genre.

A middle-aged bromance tucked inside a French crime thriller, a slick and brutal B-action picture that finds writer-director Edgar Marie channeling Nicolas Winding Refn channeling early Michael Mann.

This been-there-done-that story marks a pretty banal debut for writer-director Alain Marie, who seems far more interested in aping Refn and early-career Michael Mann than in finding his own style.

The skirmishes are alternately silly and wan. The film's gloomy techno score is its most lasting attribute.