Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: NO WAY DOWN [Fantastic Fest - Austin, Texas]
Survival in a high rise has been on the upswing in the festival circuit. "Attack On Paradise" which is also screening at Fantastic Fest this year (and which we covered at Fantasia) has a similar bent but creates more of a concept like "The Raid". “No Way Down” functions more like "Maniac Cop". The film follows Idriss, a would-be enforcer (it is not quite made clear -- he could have been a former cop) who comes back after spending time in jail to try to win back his girl Melia. What sells the film though is the beginning which speaks to something more unnatural. The play of it in that moment is quite cool. The directors Théo Jourdain and Mohamed Chabane spoke in the Q&A that for the interior they only had a couple of hallways and apartments to work with which, in the finished product, is astounding in some ways. Idriss does not want to get pulled back into this scene. The local ganglord welcomes him back but won’t give him his due money unless he goes back to the tower his man in the opening scene got lost in and bring some order. When that falls on deaf ears, a Lieutenant trying to make his bones tries to go in taking Melia’s brother, a chatterbox named Marvin in with him.
Marvin is the local influencer motormouth and the performance by Bilel Chegrani is really what keeps the energy going especially with the would-be killer running about. The directors use light and smoke to mask a lot of things but it is an interesting use of misdirection because, while it could be seen as ghostly or unworldly, it also has military connotations. The reasoning for the killer in a certain way is revealed but doesn’t dictate his level of brutality that hits back. A window escape is really well done again considering the restrictions while a rooftop battle that ends with the killer not flinching is pretty brutal (but again par for the course). There is of course references to "Die Hard" and "Escape From New York". Without revealing spoilers, there is redemption of sorts but not quite. The resolution, as with most of these action films, is just an afterthought which wraps things up nicely. But unlike "Attack On Paradise" which really understood what its main character was fighting for, there is an imbalance here which splits the idea of who we are rooting for and why they survive. It makes sense but the darkness doesn’t really resound or the action that caused it despite some powerful imagery. "No Way Down" is as much a metaphor as a path for the main character though his own mirror antithesis. If the narrative is right, he created his own hell by his design so the path he walks is damned no matter who caused the final brushstroke. 79%/B-
By Tim Wassberg
