Kelly Reilly And Idris Elba Teamed Up For This 2016 Action Movie We All Forgot About
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Idris Elba is a beloved actor, from his days on "Luther" to his work in movies like "The Suicide Squad," and everything in between. Kelly Reilly, meanwhile, plays the much-beloved Beth Dutton on "Yellowstone" and, more recently, the spin-off "Dutton Ranch." She's a big part of one of television's biggest franchises. One might think pairing these two would result in what the kids might call a banger. In the case of the 2016 action movie "Bastille Day," it did not.
Directed by James Watkins, who also directed one of the darkest horror movies ever, "Eden Lake," which also starred Reilly, "Bastille Day" was a pretty big misfire at the time of its release. But a lot of that had to do with unfortunate circumstances rather than audiences purely turning on the movie itself. But because it was such a commercial failure in its day, it kind of just came and went, largely forgotten by the movie-going public.
The movie centers on a young pickpocket (Richard Madden) and an unruly CIA agent (Elba) who team up on an anti-terrorist mission in France. It was released as "The Take" in the United States, which led to some marketing confusion. But that was really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this movie's problems and why it was ultimately relegated to relative obscurity, in large part.
For one, "Bastille Day"/"The Take" is far from a critical darling. It holds a 49% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to go with a sour 42% audience rating. The broad consensus is that this isn't some gem that got buried. It was more of a middling, run-of-the-mill actioner.
Bastille Day, aka The Take, had a troubled road to release
Aside from the general reception, there were some other factors that conspired against this movie's potential success. It's not as though movies with a poor reception have never made money, particularly in the 2010s, when going to the movies was more of a thing people did on a day that ends in "Y," just because.
As reported by Variety at the time, following terrorist attacks that took place in Paris in 2015, StudioCanal delayed the release of "Bastille Day," given that it was largely centered in France. In 2016, another terrorist attack rocked France, which prompted StudioCanal to pull the movie from theaters, per Deadline. It was a movie that got caught up in a real-world tragedy.
Overseas, "Bastille Day" made just $14.8 million at the box office. In North America, it made a grand total of $50,000, being almost completely ignored in theaters on the same weekend that "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was released. The "Fantastic Beasts" franchise eventually stumbled, but at the time, the "Harry Potter" spin-off series was of great interest to audiences. Idris Elba and Kelly Reilly's action flick was dead on arrival as a result.
In a vacuum, this seems like precisely the kind of movie audiences wanted to see Elba in at this time. This was at the height of the "Idris Elba as the next James Bond" rumors. On paper, a movie like this could have been an informal audition for 007. That's, unfortunately, not how it panned out.