FAST CONVOY/ Le Convoi

 

North American Premiere • Action/Thriller • France, 2016

DCP • 2.35 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 102 min

Directed by: Frédéric Schoendoerffer

Written by: Yann Brion, Frédéric Schoendoerffer

Cinematography: Vincent Gallot

Film Editing: Sophie Fourdrinoy

Original Score: Thibault Quillet

Produced by: Éric Névé (Carcharodon), Orange Studio.

Cast: Benoît Magimel (Alex), Reem Kherici (Nadia), Tewfik Jallab (Imad), Mahdi Belemlih (Elyes), Amir El Kacem (Yacine) 

International Sales: Indie Sales • indiesales.eu

 

Speed isn’t the only thing that kills in this slick, turbo-charged road thriller. Benoît Magimel leads a band of banlieue bad boys hauling stash for cash while steering clear of the law. Tasked with moving 3,000 lbs. of hashish from southern Spain to Paris, Alex (Magimel) organizes a motorcade of four vehicles for a “go fast” – a flagrant, high-speed drug run designed to be so risky the police can’t stop the traffickers without endangering the public.  The scout car looks for trouble up the road, while Alex stoically drives the follow car, ready to intervene should trouble be found. The team's camaraderie is fragile, and as they tick off the kilometers, suspicion and paranoia make everyone twitchy. The tension kicks into overdrive when a firefight with the Spanish police forces them to take a hostage. Burning as much adrenaline as gasoline, Alex struggles to hold the team together as they make their mad dash for pay dirt in Paris.

Action aficionado Frédéric Schoendoerffer has always been a stickler for detail and authenticity in his films, so as part of his research for this project, he brought in Yacine, a young man who had participated in  20 go fasts before he was caught and sent to jail. Co-writer Yann Brion, on his fifth collaboration with Schoendoerffer, spent several months working with Yacine as an adviser. Schoendoerffer got his first taste of filmmaking as an assistant director on his father Pierre Schoendoerffer’s war drama Dien Bien Phu in 1992. His first feature, the thriller Crime Scene (2000), starred his brother, actor Ludovic Schoendoerffer, and was nominated for a Best First Feature César.  From there, Schoendoerffer has gone on to make a handful of taut thrillers set in the world of crime, including Switch (2011), and Paris Lockdown (2007), his first outing with actor Benoît Magimel. As part of the final auditions for Convoy, actors were asked to drive as fast as they could while speaking their lines, with Schoendoerffer and his driving coordinator Jean-Claude Lagniez sitting in the back seat.

 

QUOTES:

“…kicks off at 100 mph and manages to maintain that pace for most of the running time.”

– Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter