Attack on Paradise: Film Review (Fantasia)

Bob Colaers’ Attack on Paradise is a serviceable and violent actioner that nevertheless fails to develop an identity of its own.

Action sequences are well choreographed, there are some appropriately bloody kills, and the experience as a whole feels energetic enough. But at the same time, it’s hard not to consider Attack on Paradise as a lesser version of its superior predecessors; as an R-rated romp that should have included, at least, a couple of memorable fights or shootouts, but that surprisingly ends up feeling frustratingly generic and even a bit flat.

Co-writer Saïd Boumazoughe plays Suleyman, who in the movie’s prologue is arrested after defending himself from a couple of aggressive cops. Seven years later, he is released from jail and immediately goes to his neighbourhood, which has now turned into a hellhole. As old friend Musa (Salahdine Ibnou Kacemi) tells him, his block of flats, named Paradise, has been overtaken by drug lord Prince (Achmed Akkabi), who surrounds himself with violent goons and has convinced the residents of the building that he’s their lord and saviour.

Eager to reunite with his mum, Fatma (Fatima Khanfour), Suleyman goes to Paradise with a present, but things go wrong almost immediately. Mum isn’t particularly happy to see him after having felt abandoned for seven years, and when he goes to the building’s basement to find her medicine, he becomes involved in a police raid. It turns out, the authorities have arrived to find and arrest (or even kill) Prince, and they don’t care if they end up with dozens or even hundreds of innocent casualties. Thankfully, ‘Suley’ manages to join forces with Dutch officer Yasmine (Clara Cleymans), who just wants to fulfil her mission and go home to her little daughter. Thus, they work together in order to take down Prince and make sure Suley’s mum is safe.

Plot-wise, Attack on Paradise is extremely similar to the aforementioned two sources of inspiration. Similarly to those films, this one is all about a main character who has to go from floor to floor in a building, fighting goons and getting involved in shootouts, in order to arrive at the top and take down a criminal leader. In any case, Attack the Block does try to mix things up a bit by including a personal motivation for Suleyman: reuniting with his sick mother. This, in turn, allows his character to feel a bit more human than Karl Urban’s Judge Dredd or Iko Uwais’ Rama. After all, he doesn’t really want to kill people; he just wants to have a normal life.

Unfortunately, this emotional aspect to the story isn’t enough to make Attack on Paradise feel original or truly exciting. As a character, Suleyman isn’t particularly fleshed out. We know he’s a good guy who went to jail because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we know he cares about his mother, but… that’s it. And although one could compare Clara Cleymans’s Yasmine to Olivia Thirlby’s Anderson in Dredd, the latter is much more compelling than the former. All we know about Yasmine is that she gets (kinda) bullied at work and that she loves her daughter, but not even the latter serves as a particularly strong motivation for her to survive the raid. In fact, we only see the little girl once at the beginning of the story, which feels like a missed opportunity.

Thankfully, Attack on Paradise does work as a devious little actioner, even if it doesn’t really have a standout fight or shootout. They all feel more or less the same, with the bad guys killing the cops (or vice versa) in bloody fashion, or with Suley using his martial arts skills to kick the criminals’ ass. Unfortunately, the shootouts aren’t as bloody or as visually inventive as the ones in Dredd, and the fights, while suitably well-choreographed, aren’t as brutal, fast or shockingly bloody as the ones in The Raid. Additionally, I was bothered by the inclusion of particularly fake-looking CG blood whenever a character was shot. It looked more like jam or tomato sauce than blood, and lessened the impact of all the violence taking place onscreen.

Saïd Boumazoughe does a good job of portraying Suley as a no-nonsense kind of protagonist; as a man of few words but considerable martial arts skills. The character itself might not be particularly well-rounded, but Boumazoughe is believable both during the more dramatic scenes and the tiring and complex action sequences. For her part, Clara Cleymans does what she can with Yasmine, a character that could’ve (and should’ve) had more to do in the story. And Achmed Akkabi is intimidating enough as Prince, a violent drug lord who feels invincible and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’ll give the movie this: the bad guys in here are truly bad, which makes their eventual (and inevitable) downfall all the more satisfying.

Is Attack on Paradise saying something by having a protagonist who went to jail due to the actions of a (probably racist) pair of violent cops? And by having a raid conducted by mainly white officers in an office block populated and controlled mainly by immigrants? Maybe, but this isn’t the kind of film that seems interested in conveying anything particularly deep about the injustices or prejudices of our world. First and foremost, this is a violent action movie, and in that sense, Attack on Paradise works. Unfortunately, it’s also extremely similar to two previous productions, which are more ambitious, more creative and ultimately more satisfying. Attack on Paradise isn’t an attack on good taste, but it isn’t a hidden gem waiting to be discovered either.

Big Break was screened at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 19, 2026.