Fantasia 2026: ‘Attack on Paradise’ Review
The legacy of Die Hard, Assault on Precinct 13, and the more recent The Raid: Redemption reminds audiences of the value of economical storytelling in action movies. Nothing needs to be convoluted for people to have a good time; as long as the action delivers, then you can keep the scope tight, dialogue tighter, and pacing brisk. Bob Colaers’s Attack on Paradise does not break from the plot of an individual thrust into a bloody conflict within the confines of a single location, but the Belgian actioner does little to distinguish itself from the crowd and struggles to be more than just another competent brawler thrown on a heap of its contemporaries. With a fantastic lead performance and an exciting entry point into another culture, Attack on Paradise will scratch an itch, but squanders most of its potential with poorly edited fight sequences, underdeveloped character arcs, and a boilerplate narrative.
Neon-drenched interiors and dynamic camerawork give Colaers’s film an undeniably alluring aesthetic, but the heartbeat of Attack on Paradise is what makes the film initially compelling. When we’re first introduced to Suleyman (Saïd Boumazoughe), he’s a victim of injustice at the hands of police. Simply trying to bring medication home to his ailing mother, a random search of his person escalates to a violent response from Suleyman that leaves him imprisoned for seven years. In that time, his mother’s home apartment building, referred to as ‘Paradise,’ has become overrun by gangs and drug dealers who are the target of a police raid that Suleyman finds himself reluctantly in the middle of when trying to pay her a visit. His moral code and the threat that the head of the gang, Prince (Achmed Akkabi), poses to his mother force Suleyman to work alongside a rookie police officer, Yasmine (Clara Cleymans), to survive to the top of the building and apprehend Prince.
The mother-son relationship bonds Suleyman with Yasmine’s own relationship with her daughter—two people just trying to support the ones they love amidst violent circumstances. Unfortunately, the only relationship that truly feels explored is Suleyman’s, and everything else remains on the fringes of his journey to save his mother. Yasmine’s rookie cop status, compounded by being surrounded by male police officers, places her in an immediately defensive position, but the film doesn’t come through the other side with anything to say about that. It also doesn’t really care about her relationship with her daughter except when it is in reference to Suleyman. The two are forced to work together to survive the building’s onslaught of henchmen out to kill them, but every attempt at bonding them feels forced. Thankfully, Boumazoughe and Cleymans have some undeniable chemistry as actors, and their performances endear you to their plight more than the screenplay.
None of that really matters if Attack on Paradise delivers what its economical setting promises: unrelenting carnage in tight spaces with innumerable foes. It’s what made Gareth Evans’ The Raid still impress audiences even with his bare-bones narrative, and much like that film, the entire apartment complex in Colaers’s film is on alert. Prince is a landlord who sees all and is trying to run his own criminal enterprise. He dispatches anyone at his disposal to take out the cops, whom he has been expecting to raid the building. The film quickly makes short work of many of its characters, leaving only Suleyman and Yasmine to push forward in an effort to save his mother and complete Yasmine’s initial objective. The fights are bloody, brutal fisticuffs, and there’s some great choreography to complement Steven Vanvolsem’s kinetic camera.
The problem with Attack on Paradise is that the action is edited in a way that’s disorienting. For every great build-up of tension in a single one-on-one fight, the payoff is almost always butchered. Someone will throw a punch, and either audiences won’t see the punch connect, or movements will be dropped—almost as if the fights are having frames dropped like in a video game. The result is disappointing because the creativity and violence are there, but the execution is undercut at every turn. There are very few fights where I didn’t feel cheated out of a satisfying flurry of movements. Will viewers get the gist of the interaction? Of course! Someone is being knocked out, and you still see that, but sometimes it really does feel like the film is taking shortcuts to get through a body count. This says nothing about the stunts themselves, which are honestly impressive. It’s just a shame that none of them land with any impact.
There really are just too many problems working against Attack on Paradise for it to be the blistering action vehicle it is so close to being. An impressive central performance from Boumazoughe imbues his plight with heart and determination, but that can only get you so far with familiar, well-worn story beats and action that’s never fully realized. Colaers’s inspiration from action classics clearly goes beyond pastiche, managing to evoke his own tone and sense of self for a film that could have yielded a more compelling one. Unfortunately, while the potential is visible, it all feels downplayed in the face of simply trying to get from point A to point B without losing the audience’s interest. Instead, it loses its identity.
The 30th Fantasia International Film Festival takes place between July 16th and August 2nd. Attack on Paradise celebrated its Canadian premiere on July 19th as Fantasia’s Horizon 2026 program. The full list of films selected for the festival can be found here.
