Movie Review ~ Night Call

Few genres grip us like the “wrong man on the run” thriller. From Hitchcock’s North by Northwest to Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, the premise of a wrongly accused person thrust into extraordinary danger is a narrative that refuses to age.  With Night Call, Belgian director Michiel Blanchart joins this popcorn-chomping genre with his feature debut—a lean, nocturnal thriller with a pulsating first act that captures the adrenaline of a single night, even if its momentum stumbles along the way.

The best kind of thrillers can be summed up in a short sentence. Night Call draws its tension from its simple premise: an innocent man, a deadly misunderstanding, and a race against time through the darkened city streets of Brussels.  It’s an ordinary night for Mady (Jonathan Feltre), a grad student moonlighting as a locksmith, when an emergency call comes in from Claire, who has been locked out of her apartment.  When Mady arrives, Claire (Natacha Krief) doesn’t have her ID (it’s inside) or the cash (it’s with her ID…inside) but she can describe the apartment so he lets her in. 

Of course, Claire doesn’t live there and soon vanishes with a bag of cash belonging to a ruthless crime boss, Yannick (Romain Duris).  Forced to defend himself when the owner of the apartment arrives home puts Mady in a predicament, a compromising situation that leads him to come before Yannick and become tasked with finding Claire and returning the money (meant for even more surly fellows) before dawn.  Accompanied by two armed thugs, Mady tries to piece together his information on the mysterious woman, finding that knowing the truth behind the crime may not save him.  Soon, Mady finds himself relentlessly pursued through a cityscape amid chaos that transforms from familiar to hostile with each passing hour.    

The opening sequences bristle with kinetic energy. Blanchart, working with co-writers Gilles Marchand and Laurent Brandenbourger, captures the immediacy of Mady’s predicament with tight, propulsive storytelling. Each twist feels organic, if slightly routine, and each turn is fraught with danger. Feltre’s grounded, everyman performance makes us feel every scrape and stumble, rooting for his survival even as the odds stack against him. There’s an admirable efficiency to the storytelling here – no time wasted on unnecessary backstory or elaborate exposition. Instead, we learn about Mady through action and reaction, watching him draw upon unexpected reserves of courage as he navigates this terrifying ordeal.

In addition to Feltre, the cast helps to sustain Night Call’s early promise with Krief and Jonas Bloquet (The Nun) both bringing unpredictably to the mix, each suggesting hidden motives beneath what we are originally presented with.  However, Duris (The Animal Kingdom) keeps our focus the longest, delivering a masterclass in controlled menace.  There’s a weight to his presence, never succumbing to the easy-out of making his villainy overly theatrical but instead opting for stillness and an icy calm to invoke tension.

However, for all its energy, Night Call struggles to sustain its early momentum. The first half is electric, with action sequences and stunts that have a raw crunch to them as bodies take repeated blows. But as the night wears on, so does the film’s pacing. The tension dissipates, replaced by a sense of repetition and aimlessness that the screenplay doesn’t quite overcome. A tighter edit and more inventive cinematography from Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe could have taken the material to a higher plane, transforming competent visuals into something memorable.

The film unfolds against the backdrop of a Black Lives Matter protest, introducing a potentially powerful parallel that never fully materializes. The visual of an unarmed Black man being hunted by white men wielding guns through streets filled with protesters against systemic injustice carries obvious symbolic weight. Yet Blanchart seems hesitant to engage meaningfully with these implications, leaving this thematic thread tantalizingly underdeveloped. It’s a creative decision that feels deliberate and frustrating, like a conversation that is introduced to provoke but not engage with.

Still, there’s an undeniable charm in Blanchart’s unapologetic embrace of the genre. His script wears its influences proudly, evoking the pulpy thrills from ’90s classics that prioritized accessible thrills over profound statements.  I think Night Call feels primed for an American remake; its premise could easily be transplanted to any major city without losing its core appeal. This universality serves as both a strength and a limitation – while the film delivers solid entertainment, it sometimes feels safe where it could have pushed boundaries. You can easily imagine a Hollywood version set in Chicago or Atlanta. However, whether such an adaptation would improve upon the original’s energy or polish away its distinctive edges is anyone’s guess considering the way Hollywood handles adaptations.

Despite moments where it stumbles, Night Call announces Blanchart as a director worth watching thanks to his strong grasp of action fundamentals. For viewers seeking a pulse-pounding nocturnal adventure that favors practical thrills over CGI spectacle, this Belgian export delivers enough authentic tension to warrant seeking out. Catch it before Hollywood inevitably comes calling – this wrong-man thriller gets enough right to leave you wheezing with appreciation.