Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Admirable film.

French cinema is famous for its romantic comedies and melodramas. When French movie makers try to change the genre, it's usually resulted in a flop. Secret Defense is an example of that unsuccessful attempt to mimic an American action movie. The creators of that movie really tried to do it cool, but on every turn the movie becomes really laughable. Maybe an audience of school children can believe the plot which is absolutely primitive and false. And the actors... How could the director let Vahina Giocante be so hysterical while playing a role of a trained secret agent? Her eyes are always deceiving her, even in scenes in which there is no need to be worried. She always runs and moves chaotically, and her amateurish performance finally kills the movie, which anyway has a very weak plot. I would recommend watching that movie only on a deserted island while it's raining outside. In other circumstances do something more attractive.

Contains spoilers. This movie is not very french at all. It is a rather poor attempt to transfer the ideology of some US-Secret-Service-flicks to french cinema. The movie consists of a mechanical subsequence of disgusting out-of-law practices of some secret-service-maniacs and some crazy guys that are not any better than the Secret-Service guys. The director tries hard to convince the viewer, that things work that way in reality and that its good that way, i.e. co-workers can be tortured any time just because of their religion - you never know. Women are shown as sexual objects and abuse is not only part of the game but it is the game. What makes this movie disgusting is that the directors don't crititze thiese practices, but they advertise it. They show what they think - their own narrow-minded fear driven moral.Plot is poor too: The movie starts with a girl that doesn't pass an exam at university and is then consoled by another student. Surprise surprise, the co-student is an undercover recruiter and his boss blackmails the girl into becoming an agent (as a student she earned her money as a prostitute). She then has to get into sexual intercourse with a terrorist to find out about his plans to release Vx-Gas in Paris. The second storyline is about a french guy that has to deal with drugs to finance his mothers apartment. He is caught and brought to prison. To avoid sexual intercourse with other inmates he is forced to join the local islamistic-group in prison and gets radicalized by them (some hugs, a bit of meat and some isolation do the job). He is picked by the terrorist to be the one to release the Vx-Gas in the metro of Paris. After some luggage swapping in some airports the girl stops the guy in the metro and the ending credits say: Since 2001 french intelligence could prevent 15 attacks in France.

This is a very bleak and very well acted movie. It's about the war on terror, but has quite a few other elements to it. You will have more "fun" with the movie, if you read as little as possible about the story of the movie.Just be aware that the movie is a thriller and has a woman as a central character. It's morally moving on a thin ground, but this is what makes this movie really great. It kept me on my toes guessing, what will happen next. The performances are great and even if you dislike some characters, they are still very engaging and the movie might have some points, you might over think your views.

Right, I think the first issue is with the editing, pace was roughly there but it just seemed to stutter in places and when most of the actors seem to have come straight out of stage school the pace really needs to be right on the button(compare and contrast with the UK TV drama, Spooks).The story was weak and watered down, too many jumps without any suggestion, a poor script and direction also.Thirdly the female lead, Vahina Giocante, really should have been shown the door after the first week, too much overacting for me, I've seen comedians act better. However I haven't seen any of her other stuff though so it could have been just a duff one for her.Simon Abkarian has played measured bad guys before and did pretty well but I'm afraid that poor old Gérard Lanvin just didn't have enough script to go on, they spent too much time on the Martyr when they could have worked more on his character.Sorry I really had high hopes for this and really wanted to like it, I even watched it twice to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but remember this is my opinion I'm sure others will love it. they tried to take the Spooks concept and do a French big budget movie, perhaps they should have got a script re-write and got Mathieu Kassovitz to direct.