Car chase movies are abominations but during lockdown, spurred by ancient memories of “Drive” and recent memories of “Ford v Ferrari,” I was drawn into the promised energy of “Lost Bullet.” Debut filmmaker Guillaume Pierret has fashioned a simple but powerful story around the character of super-mechanic, super-driver Lino, furloughed from jail to help a special team of road cops chasing drug-carrying “go fast” cars. As the trailer foreshadows, treachery unwinds Lino’s life and he must find a car with exonerating evidence, the lost bullet of the title, before the bad guys kill him. All well and good, and precisely the reason I picked up this film. Pierret has fashioned a tight (if occasionally silly) script full of car races, battles, loves and losses, and the chase scenes themselves are brilliantly choreographed, building up tension towards a finale car chase scene. The dampening trouble with “Lost Bullet” is the actor playing Lino, stuntman Alban Renoir, who looks suitably “low-level crim” but can sustain few emotions, not even fear or triumph. Rooting for him as the hero simply never took hold of me, and while I can recommend this movie as a frenetic time-filler, it ends as empty of life as it began.
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