The Assault is a fairly faithful recounting of the hijacking of Air France flight 8969 by Algerian Muslim terrorists in 1994. The story is told from three perspectives--the events on the plane, the leader of the French SWAT team, and some French politicians.Four terrorists board the plane disguised as Algerian authorities out the check passports of the passengers. Once someone notices their weapons and grenades, they have to take over at that point. They aim to fly to Paris and hope to have two detained terrorists released. However because a stair truck is still attached the plane, the plane can't depart. The Algerian authorities pretty much refuse to deal with the terrorists at all. Once they kill a French citizen, the French government demands the plane be allowed to depart, which it does, but to Marseilles and not to Paris due to lack of fuel.We meet also the SWAT leader who's married and has a young daughter that hasn't really bonded with him yet. The woman seems to have a bad feeling about things. While he realizes that the situation with the plane isn't favorable and that there will be casualties yet he demands to be the first to enter the plane. We're not sure if he's depressed or what.Meanwhile the French government is on full alert and some little girl working at some ministry meets the main bad Algerian terrorist who's in Paris. She offers him money to call off the hijacking, but refuses and takes the money anyway. She concludes that the terrorists will use the plane as a weapon and crash it into a French landmark. At some point in front of major authorities for some reason she just grabs the microphone and starts dictating when SWAT is to act.Once the plane is in Marseilles the order is given to assault the plane. This is around 1:15 into the movie. Our leader is indeed the first one in and the only one tasked with going after the terrorists who are all in the cockpit with the 3 pilots. All the other dozen of SWAT are busy helping the passengers escape.For no good reason the entire movie is filmed in a notch before black and white. There isn't a whole lot of dialogue and things are fairly slow for the most part. But given the events portrayed you do connect with the movie. You just can't help wishing it had been more thrilling and exciting.

t is a little difficult to watch a film like L'Assault and not feel a knot in your stomach. Here is a film about the 1994 Christmas hijacking of Air France Flight 8969 by Middle Eastern terrorist in an attempt (French Intelligence said) to take over the plane and fly it into The Eiffel Tower. Their plan was thwarted by deliberate delays by Air Traffic Control that allowed the GIGA (the French equivalent of the S.W.A.T. team) to move in. The knot in our stomachs come from the fact that this is such a current and all-too-real situation that plays in our minds a decade after the events of September 11th. Even if you know how these events played out, the tension that the film creates is present and very effective.Shot in bleached-out colors with a hand-held camera, French director Julien Leclercq keeps his film spare on personal details. He walks a very fine line between sticking to the facts and turning the material into an action picture. He mixes two elements very well, so that the material never feels overblown or exploitive. He knows very well how to draw tension from his viewer. The opening scenes are the most effective as we watch the terrorists preparing for their mission, praying, gathering their weapons and their explosives, and trying to keep their minds on their task. We follow the terrorists all the way from their meeting point to the plane where they pose as agents before being discovered by one very observant passenger. That's when all Hell breaks loose.We've seen those scenes before with all the shouting, threats, demands and cowering passengers, but what makes the scene work is that there is real fear coming from the terrorists themselves. Leclercq's camera often gets very close to their eyes so that we can see that while they are focused on their task, they are still scared out of their minds. The focal point on the terrorist side rests with an angry young fellow named Yahia (Aymen Saïdi), the leader whose anger and frustration at not getting what he wants (there's a long bit of business about the fact that the plane can't take off because no one will move the stairs) makes him effective and very scary. One thing that I didn't expect was a heart-wrenching development late in the film when someone very close to him begs him to reconsider this whole terrorist plot. Films like this rarely give the terrorist a human dimension.Parallel to the scenes of the terrorist plot is another story, that of a GIGA member named Thierry (Vincent Elbaz) whose wife is terrified when he goes out on a job. We don't get to know him or his family in great detail, but their story plays as an emotional center to what is going on from the side of the French. We know all we need to know. He's on the job. She's afraid for him. We don't need much more exposition than that. That's the most effective element of the film. It plays out in reality without slowing down for character development. You don't need it. All we need are the facts at hand. This element of the film is smart on the part of the director because since we know how the story concludes, Thierry's story adds a suspenseful, and unexpected element.The movie has a slow build-up to the final assault by the GIGA and, unlike most action pictures, earns its ending. Leclercq does a very good job of staging the action scenes in a confined space with no heroics in sight. This works especially well if you don't already know how it turned out. What he has for us at the end is quite unexpected.L'Assault is, I'm afraid, is going to inevitably draw comparison to Paul Greengrass' United 93. His was the better film - I chose it as my favorite film of 2006. It works more efficiently because of its spareness and because of our heavy emotional investment in the events of September 11th. I don't know as much about the events in L'Assault. That doesn't make them any less significant, but it makes the emotional weight just a little lighter. Comparing the two is really not fair anyway. The success of United 93 lay in its cold, straight-ahead vision. L'Assault is a little more cinematic and develops characters, both good and bad just enough so that we are invested in what is happening because they are people that we understand a little bit about. We know the events that took place. We know how they turned out. What is frightening is that even when the terrorists fail, we know with dread, that they'll be back.

L'assaut is a French film based on the true events that occurred in 1994 when Air France Flight 8969 was hijacked by the 'Armed Islamic Group' at Algiers with the supposed intention of crashing in Paris. What should be a gripping and emotionally charged film plays more like a ploddingly dull TV drama. Attempts to breathe life into the central character 'Thierry', the leader of a special ops team assigned to the case, come off as more token than genuine as we're served a brief back-story and glimpse into his troubled world which includes an unhappy wife and a cute toddler who frequently asks where Daddy is. With a tight running time of just 87mins, the film doesn't waste any time getting to the actual hijacking, but once there seems to wander off on cul-de-sac sub- plots while showing scenes including characters we're not terribly interested in or invited to get to know. Considering the hostages endured a two-day ordeal at the hands of the hijackers, the film spends very little time exploring the mood on the plane in favour of amping up the testosterone for a criminally underwhelming climax. The inclusion of actual news footage of the real life events adds a sense of genuine interest but only to the point whereby you wish you were watching a documentary about the situation as opposed to a half baked dramatisation of it. Aesthetically, the film has a washed out look where colours are all but drained to black and white which in a better film might have some effect, but here it just seems to mirror how flat the screenplay is. Given that the films content is so flawed, the choice to shoot in the same shaky-cam documentary style as Paul Greengrass' United '93 inevitably draws unfavourable comparisons. While in the real world these dramatic events were to foreshadow the tragedy of 9/11, as a piece of film, this telling of those events lives deep in the shadow of United '93.

one of the worst ever seen so far about hijacking a passenger plane. the screenplay is badly enough to put several female characters in it, yet the wife of the french special force member with their daughter, the woman who works for the french emergency management authorities, the female passenger sitting next to her parents, are totally unnecessary casting. the scenes about how the french government handling such situation are also very laughable. those four hijackers also acted so lame and so stupid. the most ridiculous plot is how those 4 hijackers could so easily get on board without any reason to justify their success. the scene about the stupid french woman who works for the government trying to bribe the terrorist leader so naively is also a big laugh. there are so many useless and meaningless scenes in this movie dragging out the whole time just like the airplane on the tarmac. the final assault is also like a child play, so laughable and and so lame. showing the wife crying while watching the rescue progress is also so laughably lame and totally unnecessary. this is one of the worst films in such genre and it should not be put into production in the first place. a total waste of money and time of yours and mine.