Very well executed

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Typical subsidised French movie. The premise was enough for the whole thing to get the green-light, but it's really a flimsy story. Of course that means we had an untalented director attached very early in development (it takes a lot of duds in France for untalented people to be phased out of film production) so, to put it more kindly, with a director who only delivered widely unimpressive flicks in the past no wonder the whole movie flies below the radar of quality. Yuck, it's a stealth movie designed to nose-dive into oblivion.Too bad for the leads, Clovis Cornillac and Marie-Josée Croze are both talented and they do quite well with one-dimensional characters who are overwhelmingly passive, at a loss and irresolute for most of the movie. Who could then turn a vaguely good premise into gold, or bronze yet, with only a handful of rusty nails? It's really sad to see a whole feature budget swallowed by something which barely looks like a mediocre TV movie.

Thomas Vincent seems here André Cayatte's psychic son: a director who takes the law in his own hands;we do need someone like André Cayatte,this director the Nouvelle Vague was always putting down.The subject is absorbing and the movie is up to scratch in its first half:the scene in the hospital where the dead son's mobile's keeps on ringing (spooky ,huh?);the press conference;and to top it all ,the sequence in the café where a scientist explains to a bewildered Cornillac how we are all potential sick persons and that there's a lot of money to be made ;developing countries ,we could help them ,but they are not interesting commercially speaking: rich countries are the gold mine.Molière was a visionary when he wrote his "Malade Imaginaire" in 1693!Too bad the character disappears after such terrifying lines.The second part is less interesting ,consisting of chases,abduction attempts ,violence ,in short,your average thriller.The human side,present in the first half ,has almost disappeared and I find Cornillac's playing rather wooden -maybe when he is dubbed ,it's less embarrassing- Jean Reno's style.His female partner 's is not very subtle either and is not sparing of gestures and words (she's almost always shouting).What is definitely lacking is details about the young victim;we know almost nothing about this unfortunate young lad and the final "unexpected" revelation does not make much sense out of context.

For reasons that only can be related to protect the crap the Hollywood movie industry produces this smart and not easy to digest movie did not get distribution while awful USA movies (non-independent) are shown in thousands of theatres.This is not a matter of subtitles or commercial issues. European countries like France or Spain translate the dialogs in their own language and few theatres show the original version. This is the real FREEDOM, USA citizens do not have (though are being convinced of the contrary). On the contrary USA distributors; buy movies that are never shown because if they do people could first of all THINK something Hollywood is against and second could realize that out of the technical and production aspects USA movies are far from art; just plain formula repeated and remixed in every major title.Now, about "LE NOUVEAU PROTOCOL"; Raoul Craft (the outstanding Clovic Cornillac) is notified about his son dead on car accident. The first 15 or 20 minutes deals with the tragedy and family sadness without almost using dialogs. During that period; Raoul is contacted by a women (always solid Marie-Josee Croze in a too complex character) that a medical laboratory was involved on the kids dead.After the initial sorrow, a series of unclear events makes Raoul believe the woman and tries to find out what happened. Things get violent but in a completely unexpected way. The line between good and evil is blurred; as it is in real life.It could be fare to compare this movie with the CONSTANT GARDENER (the same subject matter); however while that movie had a more poetic / romantic approach, this one is pretty complex and never gives an easy answer to anything.

When I saw it, I thought of "Constant Gardner", that talked about the same subject: relentless struggle between lonely but determined idealists and powerful worldwide pharmaceutic industry, companies. David vs Goliath.An hopeless fight, lost in advance for the tiny ones.In this feature, the scene where Clovis Cornillac has just learned his son's death in a car accident is absolutely outstanding. I felt shivers all over my body. A terrific scene. Unforgettable.It's not only a political movie, but an action packed too.A sad film, so awful.I loved it so much.