Klara, a highly trained interpreter for the French military, is transferred back home to Nice following a traumatic combat mission in Syria, where she is assigned to Operation Sentinel – an anti-terror programme that patrols the streets of France. After her sister Tania is savagely raped and beaten following a night out, Klara goes rogue and embarks on a mission to find the attackers and avenge her sister. Her hunt for vengeance puts her in the path of the powerful, and untouchable, Kadnikov family.

I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a bad film but if I’m perfectly honest, I don’t have a lot of positives to write about. The script is thin, watery and practically non-existent and the plot is little more than a cookie-cutter copy of the typical revenge story trope but at least the action sequences are passable, if not a little few and far between.

I think what frustrated me more than anything with Sentinelle is that there was potential for so much more. The impact of Karla’s PTSD and her subsequent dependency on narcotics could have acted as a real point of difference but it was too underdeveloped to hold any sort of real meaning. Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing the film taken down an Equalizer-esque route with her acting on threats perceived in her paranoia.

The thing that makes these types of films so consistently enjoyable is the use of a good protagonist that we can all root for; Taken gives us a vengeful father searching for his daughter, John Wick a grieving husband and Peppermint an unforgiving wife and mother. Unfortunately Sentinelle doesn’t really give us that, instead it uses a vague ‘Oh, but the bad guy is really rich and therefore we can’t touch him’ justification for Karla’s actions.

With only an 80 minute runtime, Sentinelle won’t make too much of a dent in your evening but, in all honesty, that is all it really has going for it. If you are looking for a good action flick with a female lead then I would recommend the likes of Peppermint, Colombiana or Close instead. You’re less likely to be disappointed.

Sentinelle is now available to stream on Netflix.