A law-abiding locksmith may not seem like a profession that would lead to a lot of action, but in Michiel Blanchart’s Belgian thriller “Night Call,” one mundane assignment turns its hero’s shift into a tense fight to survive. Mady (Jonathan Feltre), our locksmith, picks up the phone and hears a young woman’s voice on the other end. Could he help her get into her apartment? Sure, it’s part of the job. But this supposedly routine call feels off. She keeps dodging questions about payment, and making excuses as to why she doesn’t have her I.D. Still, Mady helps her, but when she slips away to allegedly get his payment, another figure stands in the doorway and this one is much more scary. The stranger lunges at the locksmith, and in the brawl, Mady kills him. But his escape is short lived as Mady is captured by the man’s associates demanding the money stolen from the apartment. Mady must now find ways to placate a gang that’s ready to kill him at a moment’s notice by solving the mystery of where their money went before they change their mind.
Blanchart’s film is a boiler plate thriller where a normal person finds themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Mady must use his wits and experience to pick locks, lie to sneak into places, steal a phone to call the mystery girl, and corner her for answers. Stifling his fears and frustration, Mady is as hellbent to survive as his enemy is to find their looted cash. As Mady, Feltre plays a sympathetic figure who cries when hurting someone and scares himself when he kills the man who assaults him. Yet, he’s unafraid to take action, proactively looking for solutions to escape and fight back when needed.
Mady’s desperation is palpable in many frames of the movie thanks to the work of Blanchart and his cinematographer, Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe. They ensure their hero’s sweaty struggle to make it to the dawn is felt in pained close ups and breathless chase sequences. So many of the shots channel a film noir spirit as the camera follows a desperate man on the run from the shadows closing in on him. When he’s face-to-face with the gang trying to shake him down for answers, the scene is well lit, almost as if they were audaciously operating in the light without consequences. It certainly feels that way as police intervention – when it belatedly arrives – shows up with a woeful outcome.
While “Night Call” delivers in the thriller department of the narrative, it stumbles when trying to tackle the politics of the day. Blanchart, who co-wrote “Night Call” with Gilles Marchand and Laurent Brandenbourger, includes the Black Lives Matter protests in Belgium as a backdrop to the action. Mady drives by protestors on the way to his job, and he listens to some of the news updates before switching to his favorite singer, Petula Clark. Blanchart clearly wants to say something about BLM, but it doesn’t come across as positive. Mady, a Black man, does not seem especially called to take to the streets as he has a job to keep. At one point, he’s harassed by another protestor who calls him a “sheep” for not joining the march. After cops arrest Mady and a different protestor, she tears into the officers about their unlawful treatment, and she’s oblivious to violence that’s about to happen. The protestors are painted in a negative light, yet later when police brutality reenters the film for its final act, now it seems that BLM protestors were vindicated after all.
While “Night Call” satiates the craving for a typical thriller, the BLM subplot feels strangely out-of-place and off-putting, as if it were grafted on in an effort to seem relevant. White supremacism even makes an appearance early on in a cutaway shot inside of the apartment Mady initially opens, showing Nazi paraphernalia on a mantle he can’t see in the dark. When the hulking guy walks in on an unknown Black man in his kitchen, he can’t hide his rage. Yet, it doesn’t seem like Mady has found a cell of white supremacists, the idea is introduced then never mentioned again. The movie doesn’t need that to feel scarier or more tense, just the threat of accidentally walking in on a robbery is adrenaline enough, but the filmmakers added more ingredients to a stew that was already fully cooked.