The Orphans (now streaming on Netflix) finds another longtime stunt expert moving to the director’s chair: Olivier Schneider helms his second action feature (after 2024’s GTMax) after decades of being a stuntman or stunt coordinator in Brotherhood of the Wolf, Spectre, Taken, a few Fast and Furious movies and many more. He co-writes with star Alban Lenoir (the Lost Bullet films), who acts alongside Dali Benssalah, playing two long-estranged rivals reunited by circumstances to be explained here shortly. The question is whether it’s a memorable reunion laden with chases and shootouts, or just a boilerplate assemblage of chases and shootouts.
The Gist: Leila (Sonia Faidi) takes no shit, and that’s a problem. She’s 17 and a hell of a fencer. When the referee shows bias for her opponent, she has no qualms with slapping the official with her wooden fencing rod. Foreshadowing for what’s to come? Almost certainly. On the way home, serious conversation with her mother Sofia (Naidra Ayadi) turns into playful banter – and then a neon green car swerves right at them. Leila yanks the wheel. The car crashes, flips, rolls. Sofia is unconscious. Leila crawls from the wreckage, sees a guy gape at the scene then hop in the green car and peel away.
THE HOSPITAL: Sofia is in a coma. Fanny (Anouk Grinberg), proprietor of the orphanage where Sofia and Leila work, comforts the girl. Meanwhile, Gabriel (Lenoir) moseys into the elevator and just as the door’s about to close, a foot triggers it to open again. It’s Idriss (Benssalah). These two. We saw in nifty split-screen opening credits that Gab is an ass-kickin’ kickass cop and military veteran and Driss is similarly skilled but on the opposite side of the law. They grew up together in the orphanage and still nurse 18-year-old grudges stemming from Sofia loving one and then loving the other one and then loving neither of them. Such is the question of Leila’s paternity. But then Sofia flatlines, and Leila goes from not having ever met her father to no longer having a mother.
Everyone returns to the orphanage, where Leila spies a newspaper photo of Christina Rovelli (Suzanne Clement), a powerful CEO or politician or something, at her home – with that neon green car in the background. Remember when Gab introduced his Chekhov’s Service Pistol into the narrative a couple scenes back? Well, Leila grabs it and negates its Chekhovness by using before the third act, sneaking onto the Rovelli property to confront the driver, coked-out Rovelli failson Mathias (Guillaume Souberyan). Mathias wanted to call the cops after the accident but his shitty mother wanted to avoid a scandal and what she says goes. And the subsequent trouble requires Gab and Driss to get involved, teaming up for a little bitter bickery back-and-forth, discussions of out-of-character fatherly feelings and significant amounts of vroom-vroom shooty-shooty punchy-socky bang-bang.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Orphans is a mismatched-buddy action-almost-comedy trying to be a slightly more serious riff on the likes of Lethal Weapon or Tango and Cash. It’s also not quite the rip-roaring extravaganza from an ex-stuntman, like the John Wicks, Atomic Blonde or The Fall Guy.
Performance Worth Watching: Benssalah and Lenoir aren’t exactly Gibson and Glover in the chemistry dept., so let’s use this space to acknowledge Faidi for giving the film some spunky, youthful energy.
Our Take: The Orphans is 51 percent watchable and 49 percent forgettable, which essentially asserts that could-be-worse is better than just-bad. So Schneider’s efforts to entertain us are reasonably effective, especially for just-one-among-many Netflix endeavors that typically aren’t burdened with expectations of greatness. Its biggest struggle is tone, which wavers from depictions of suicide to Gab and Driss’ quietly comical rivalry, and the result is washy and noncommittal, with the comedy and higher dramatic points lacking some punch.
But Schneider’s efforts are more focused on the action set pieces, which are nicely shot and choreographed, and lean heavily on practical effects. No sequence necessarily stands out, but in the moment, it’s enjoyable, especially when Schneider guns it down the stretch for the final 30, the script for which primarily reads, “INTENSE GRUNTING.” The action ranges from the boilerplate frenemies reunion, in which Gab and Driss get fully acquainted for the first time in forever by pounding the living piss out of each other just because, and the extended final stretch, which shifts from a car chase to a shootout to fisticuffs, leading up to a confrontation with Rovelli’s sternfaced head of security, an intimidating villain who could use an opportunity to chew the scenery and define himself as something more than just another among the endless supply of faceless goons our protags use as target practice. The Orphans could use some tonal congruency, and a little more pep, a little more depth of character, a little more potent comedy to differentiate it from more disposable action films, but it’s nevertheless an enjoyable 95 minutes.
Our Call: The Orphans gets in, makes a mess and gets out in a reasonably entertaining fashion. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
