Bullet Points: Lost Bullet 2 (2022)
Last month, I reviewed Guillaume Pierret’s Lost Bullet in preparation for the upcoming Last Bullet… but there’s one more stop before I get to the third film in the Guillaume Pierret/Alban Lenoir trilogy (coming to Netflix on May 7th) and that of course is the second movie in the trilogy, 2022’s Lost Bullet 2…
- The Lino Sleeps Tonight: The story picks up directly after the events of the first film. Lino (Alban Lenoir) wakes up in the hospital, feeling like he went through a windshield… because he did go through a windshield. At his bed side is Julia (Stéfi Celma), who informs Lino that Areski, the dirty cop responsible for killing Lino’s mentor Charas and Lino’s brother Quentin, is on the run… leaving everything behind including his wife and kid. Then when Lino asks about Areski’s partner in crime, Marco (Sébastien Lalanne), Julia hesitates for a moment and then tells Lino that Marco escaped too… which makes Lino question who helped Marco!?! As Julia leaves the hospital, she tells her superior Moss, that “it” was a mistake… the “it” being the fact that Marco did NOT escape and instead the French police placed Marco into protective custody while they try to gather evidence and build a case into the corrupt Commander Resz… the man who orchestrated Areski and Marco’s dirty drug dealings!
- When Stalking Goes Right: When Lino gets out of the hospital, he is obsessed with tracking down Areski and Marco… he begins stalking Areski’s wife Stella, parking outside her place of work and her home, day and night… Stella even confronts Lino about it, telling him straight up, Areski isn’t coming back, not for her, not for their kid, not for nothing… Julia also tries to intervene, telling Lino he needs to move on. She assures him that the police have a car on Areski’s house day and night. But that doesn’t deter Lino, and one night the stakeout cops spot Lino parking his car and getting ready for his own personal stakeout, when a call comes over the radio that they have to respond to. Moments after the cops take off, some masked goons break into Areski’s house… Stella panics and runs upstairs to the baby’s room, where she barricades the door as two of the masked men try to force their way in. Meanwhile, Lino has entered the home and catches the third man tearing up the kitchen looking for something (likely all that money that Areski took with him at the end of the original), Lino beats the ever loving crap out of that guy. The ruckus that it caused draws the upstairs masked men back downstairs, who at first are stunned by seeing what Lino has done to their accomplice, then they get their asses handed to them to…. Stella comes down to find an exhausted Lino on her couch and the three intruders neutralized…. The cops show up, Julia once again chews Lino out and hands him the keys to the police garage. Lino listens to Julia this time, finds what remains of Charas’ Renault 21 Turbo at the garage, gets it started and now it is time to get back to work!
- One Year Later: Lino is back, badge and all, working with Julia and the rest of the narcotics unit taking out drug runners. This means some high speed chase action, but even better, we get a high speed chase going the wrong way on a busy stretch of highway! When it is all said and done, borders are crossed, Lino manages to intercept the drug runner and we meet Alvaro, a cop from neighboring Spain, who was an old friend of Charas and the two men instantly bond over their mutual admiration for Charas and dislike for Marco, who Alvaro actually recommended to Charas for the narcotics team… Back at the garage, mechanical wiz Lino is testing a new electrifying weapon for his renovated Renault 21 Turbo. But his work is interrupted by a call from someone claiming that Lino’s mother/guardian has taken ill and doesn’t have long to live, they give Lino an address but the whole thing is a set up from Commander Resz’s main man, Yuri. The address is actually where the cops have stashed Marco away, and they intend on letting Lino unwittingly hand deliver Marco to them… and it almost works. When Lino comes face to face with Marco, he immediately knocks him out with a shovel, throws his ass in the trunk of his car and races back to the police precinct, filled with anger that he had been lied to… that anger will only intensify when Lino also finds out that the French authorities cut a deal with Marco, that will see him go free if he helps them take down Areski and Commander Resz… this leads to a knock down, drag out as Lino (with Marco as his prisoner) needs to fight his way out of the police precinct, squaring off with the cops at the precinct and Yuri and his team. This whole sequence was an amplified version of a similar scenario from the original and really sets the bar for the rest of the movie.
- Race to Spain: Lino feels he can’t trust any of his co-workers, even Julia, so he turns to Alvaro for justice, sending him a picture of Marco in his trunk. Lino and Alvaro plan a meet up, but Lino has to get there first and he has cops on his tail, which means more vehicular mayhem including a Blues Brothers-esque cop car pile up! There’s also a one-on-one chase between Lino and Julia, which is the embodiment of the complex and complicated relationship between the two… Lino manages to escape Julia and get Marco to Alvaro, but Alvaro still needs to get back to Spain which is no easy task with multiple police checkpoints set up, and worse… Yuri and his team! This means Julia and Lino now have to team up again, to help Alvaro (I told you their relationship is complicate)! If you are wondering if Lino gets to use the new weapon he was testing, fear not… he does and it is worth the wait! …the action does eventually make its way to Spain, with unexpected twists all the way to the end, setting the table for the final installment, Last Bullet!
Lost Bullet 2 took the action up a notch from the original, which has me wondering if they’ll be able to top themselves once again. More layers of the proverbial onion were also peeled off, as we learn that Areski wasn’t necessarily the big bad we thought he was in the first film, but instead the guy working for the big bad. I should note, that awe do see Areski in the final minutes of the film after being M.I.A. up until that point… so he should be playing a much bigger role in the finale, but what about Lino!?!?
While it is teased that after the events of Lost Bullet 2, Lino is going to be spending the rest of his life in prison at best, and at worst he is dead, I am pretty sure he will be back for Last Bullet, since not only has Lino proven to be one tough bastard, he is also in the teaser trailer! And that’s what I get for sleeping on this franchise, but at least I am up to date now and ready for May 7th when Last Bullet drops on Netflix!
