While it’s not always the case, any movie that ends up spending years on the shelf before eventually being released rarely turns out to be worth the wait. Although the reasoning behind Bastille Day being delayed for so long was outwith the production’s control, the forgettable actioner hardly arrived on the scene with a bang to prove its doubters wrong.
The story is the sort of fluff that the genre can do in its sleep, with Richard Madden’s pickpocket making a living in Paris, only to get himself into hot governmental waters when he steals a bag containing CIA secrets. As a result, Idris Elba’s elite operative is dispatched in pursuit, before the mismatched duo get caught up in an odd couple caper involving a conspiracy that rises to the very top of the food chain.
Shooting on the film – which was rebranded as The Take for many international markets – wrapped in December of 2014, but audiences in the United States wouldn’t see the end product until November of 2016. As mentioned, it had nothing to do with the work put in, but rather the terrorist attacks in Paris that took place the previous year, with the studio wisely deciding that unveiling a frivolous shoot ’em up with similar thematic elements wasn’t the right call.
Not that Bastille Day set the world on fire when it was finally shown to the world, with a 48 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and box office take of under $15 million a less than robust return. Action flicks are catnip to streaming viewers, though, with the run-of-the-mill European caper having been dusted off and thrust back onto the upper echelons of Prime Video’s global rankings this weekend, per FlixPatrol.