March 14, 2026

In the early months of the pandemic back in 2020, I took great comfort in going to my friend John-Paul Panelli’s backyard, sitting by the firepit, and projecting action movies up against his garage. I’ve always loved action flicks. I have distinct memories of going with my older brothers and cousins to see the latest offerings from Stallone, Arnold, Bruce Willis, and later Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. But it was in those post-pandemic months where JP and I were breaking down, discussing, and examining all of the set pieces with a filmmakers eye in mind.

Over the years, we continued this tradition, now moved indoors, usually at my place on a Friday night with burritos from Cactus Taqueria! And we’ve delved into action films from all over the world. Just recently, I’ve really been attracted to modern French action films, most of which end up on Netflix. And the LOST BULLET trilogy only recently came up on my radar. I had such an incredible time watching all three of these features, consecutively for three nights in a row, that I knew it had to be the focus of a new article on my website. Let’s celebrate the LOST BULLET movies and their brave return to the practical action film!

LOST BULLET (2020)

Alban Lenoir plays Lino, a brilliant mechanic who is a bit of a genius when it comes to modifying and building crash cars. Desperate to help his troubled foster brother, Quentin (Rod Paradot), they attempt to rob a jewelry store by crashing through the entrance, but end up going through seven concrete walls!! Quentin manages to run out of the car and escape but Lino is nabbed by the police and goes to jail.

Shortly into his prison sentence, he’s visited by a Detective named Charas (Ramzy Bedia) who heads up a squad that focuses on drug dealers. He offers him a chance out of prison if he’ll re-enforce their cars in his unique style. Hence, using his recognizable unique talents in his favor to help the police. But one day, Lino and Charas are out to see Quentin, and stumble upon dirty cops from Charas’ own squad in on the take! They murder him and frame Lino for the crime!

Now he’s on the run from everyone and trying to secure evidence to prove his innocence. Pretty straight forward with some insane action along the way. In particular, in one scene, Lino is in a holding cell and pulls off a stunning escape in the middle of a police headquarters in an epic fight that lasts several minutes. The innovative way that he continually fights 10 different cops in an attempt to get the hell out of there was a hell of a highlight!

Also, there are a handful of practical car chases, most of which end with tremendous carnage and crashes that are all done practically. Far more impressive than any of the CGI nonsense you’d see in a FAST & FURIOUS movie. And that’s part of the fun. He’s introduced right away as someone that does interesting things with cars, so he uses his skills and intellect in the finale in a way only he could.

This was cool stuff, and now I’m looking forward to seeing the next two movies in the franchise, all three of which are on Netflix! All of them star Alban Lenoir who I had just seen in THE ORPHANS, so I guess he’s France’s current go-to action star!

LOST BULLET 2 (2022)

Following up LOST BULLET with the sequel, LOST BULLET 2, starring Alban Lenoir who my friend Cedric told me is like the French Jason Statham!

The first film was a cool little straight forward action movie. It ended in just the right spot, and yet this sequel picks up immediately after in an interesting, unique way. Lino (Alban Lenoir) having proved his innocence in the killing of his mentor Charas but losing his brother along the way, is mending in a hospital bed. When he gets out, he begins stalking the wife and daughter of Areski (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the dirty cop that killed Charas, but fled at the end of the last flick. It’s a good thing he was tailing them! In a moment when the police pull protective detail, a group of masked men break in to attack Areski’s former-wife and daughter. Lino goes in and beats the unholy shit out of them! These fights are brutal and awesome. You feel these hits. And even better, there’s a moment when two of the thugs come in on Lino still punching their colleague, and he continues to do so in front of them, even though the guy is unconscious, in an intimidating way, as if to say, “you want some of this?!”

A year goes by and now Lino is part of the police squad with his ex Julia. (A returning Stéfi Celma) I don’t know how he got on the force, legally, considering his criminal past, but whatever, I’ll go with it. He’s also now dating Stella (Anne Serra), the wife of his nemesis from the first movie. (WILD!) It turns out that his superiors lied to him and Marco (Sébastien Lalanne), Areski’s henchman, whom killed his brother and whom he thought escaped is actually alive and well and under police protective custody! Lino, naturally, wants justice for his brother, so he drags this jerk to the Spain border to hand him over to one of Carnas’ old colleagues, Alvaro (Diego Martín), for a proper trial. Oh yeah, and the drug cartels he worked for are after him and most are dirty cops too!

Again, the car chases are extraordinary and done practically. The fun of the first movie is that Lino has a very unique skillset for redesigning cars, and they make great use of that in this entry too, especially in the latter half. He drives up to cars during pursuits, gets his front hooks under the car, and uses this fuel injection button to launch these cars straight up into the air and every time, it’s jaw dropping because you can tell they really did it! Alvaro, the old friend of Carnas in Spain, even says at one point, “I love this guy.”

I have to believe that they knew they were making a third and final chapter because this ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger with Areski appearing at the tail end, but I’m invested and all in!

LAST BULLET (2025)

You know you have something good when they’re able to take the simple, straight forward premise of the first film and expand upon it in a way that’s bigger, better, more exciting, and recontextualizes what you saw in the previous films.

The entire opening sequence focuses on Areski (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the villain of the first film! But if you just watched this movie on its own, you would never realize he’s the bad guy from the first film that set this whole thing in motion. He’s living and working in Germany when General Resz (Gérard Lanvin), the head Commissioner of Police that also happens to run the entire European drug cartel, sends some men to kill him and cover up all loose ends. Miraculously, Areski outwits and outfights them all, burns down his house, and heads back to France to settle the score. (Which leads us to the pre-credits scene from LOST BULLET 2)

At the end of the last film, Lino (Alban Lenoir) took the wrap for Marco’s death to protect Julia (Stéfi Celma) and the Spanish and French police make a trade for him with Alvaro (Diego Martín), his mentor’s old friend that helped him last go-round. But it doesn’t end well for the Spanish police, sadly.

From there, it becomes a multi-cat-and-mouse chase as returning (and scarred!) baddie Yuri (Quentin D’Hainaut) is after Areski. Lino is after Areski. And everyone wants to bring down Resz. Or do they? It turns out Areski is far more complicated than we were led to believe. Technically, yes, he’s a bad guy. He murdered Charas (Ramzy Bedia) in the first movie but we learn that it was never his intention and he just dug himself too deep into a situation with Rasz that he had no other way out of.

As usual, the practical car chases and crashes AND all the hand to hand fights are top notch and fun to watch. There were plenty of times where cars crashes and I flinched and yelled because I know it’s real cars doing real shit!

At one point, Yuir and Areski are having a fight to the death on a French metro bus / train, when the door opens and in walks Lino, right in the middle of them, and so begins a three way fight where all three parties are trying to kill the other two! Outstanding.

Plenty of unexpected twists and turns going in the third and final act, and of course, since Lino’s specialty is “souping up” cars, you can expect his grand finale tow truck to have a bunch of creative surprises attached to it! Even Yuri, who was the big baddie of the second film, has his not-so-black-and-white motivations in this one and plays a big part into the satisfying conclusion.

Again, I’m really enjoying my deep dive into French cinema, but in particular, this trilogy, all three of which were directed by Guillaume Pierret have been excellent and brought back the “wow” factor to practical stunts and car crashes that have been replaced by unrealistic CGI in Hollywood films. This was so worth the ride for the LOST BULLET trilogy! And now I’ve got a couple more Alban Lenoir movies to check out.

BONUS FEATURE!

AKA (2023)

Yet another banger with French action star Alban Lenoir! (Recommended to me by my friend Cedric.) And a complicated one, morally!

In the opening scene, Alban’s character is captured, tied up, bag over his head, and thrown into a cell somewhere in Libya. He’s actually undercover and looking for a kidnapped journalist Sonia. When he realizes he’s in the same holding facility as her, he pulls a small blade he’s been hiding out of his butt (No, really!), makes a daring escape, kills off all the guards and soldiers. Comes back and pulls the bag off of a grateful Sonia. And then… shoots her in the back of the head! Whoa. Didn’t see that coming!

It turns out he’s an under cover agent for a French Intelligence unit called Kruger. He believes a terrorist named Moktar Al Tayeb (Kevin Layne) is after a major political figure and so using his actual identity, Adam Franco, they send him to join Pastore crime syndicate, work his way up the ranks there in record time to discover a connection which will lead him to Moktar.

Along the way, he fights! Sometimes it’s his own new colleagues, just to prove himself. Or in another memorable scene, a group of rival gang members are starting shit outside his boss’ wife’s club and we see him beat the piss out of everywhere but threw the security monitor! Adam also develops a kinship with the Pastore son, Jonathan. (He’s got to be about 6 tor 7?) The more they reveal of Adam’s backstory, the more we realize that he has a personal soft spot for kids in danger.

And not everything is as it seems between the villain that’s being referred to as a “terrorist” (whose entire family were practically wiped out in an attack targeting him) and the political figure that so desperately wants him silenced.

Over all, really solid, a bit grimmer than the LOST BULLET movies that Lenoir is known for, and some good twists in the finale I didn’t see coming. He is an absolute BEAST in this, one of the characters even refers to him as such! He’s got Alan Richardson’s physique in this, unlike in any of his other movies.

It’s so bizarre that I started with THE ORPHANS which was the weakest of all the Lenoir movies I’ve watched! I’m glad I was able to backtrack into some really great action movies in his filmography.

*All of the above reviews have come from my personal Letterboxd account where I’ve gotten back into the habit of reviewing all of the films I watch. Please feel free to follow along: https://letterboxd.com/RobertVGalluzzo