Today’s quick review: Sentinelle. After a traumatic tour of duty in the Middle East, Klara (Olga Kurylenko) transfers home to Nice, where she joins the soldiers patrolling the city to keep the peace. Still working through the lingering issues from her deployment, Klara is pushed to the brink when her sister Tania (Marilyn Lima) is raped and beaten into a coma by Leonid Kadnikov (Michel Nabokoff), a Russian tech magnate whom the police cannot touch.
Sentinelle is a French action movie about a traumatized soldier who breaks the law to avenge her sister. Sentinelle takes a more realistic approach than other action movies, showing how Klara’s experiences changed the way she looks at civilian life and the drug addiction she develops trying to cope. However, in spite of a promising setup, Sentinelle lacks the vision and craftsmanship needed to tell its story the way it wants to be told.
Sentinelle suffers from a few key issues. Klara has the makings of a sympathetic protagonist, but she rarely interacts with other characters, giving her no real opportunity to grow. The movie also skips key parts of her character arc, leaving her drug addiction and her few relationships unresolved. The action scenes are passable, but Sentinelle does a poor job motivating them, having Klara dive straight in without going through the proper setup.
The result is a movie that feels half-baked. As a personal drama about trauma and addiction, Sentinelle only scratches the surface, with none of the subtle character work needed to make its premise stick. As an action movie about justice and revenge, Sentinelle goes through the motions but never figures out how to leave its own mark on the revenge genre. Action fans may get some modest value out of the movie, but most should skip it.
For a more powerful look at the psychological scars left by war, try The Hurt Locker. For a more compelling action thriller in the same vein, try Taken or Death Wish.
[4.7 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11734264/). I give it a 5.5 for a decent setup hampered by weak storytelling.