Netflixable? The Best Action/Rom-Com in Ages is French and violently hilarious — “All Time High (Nouveaux riches)”

Silly me, I kept thinking about David Fincher’s dry and somewhat overpraised hitman film “The Killer” during sequences of the French comic thriller “Nouveaux riches,” retitled “All-Time High” and dubbed — if you prefer — for English speaking consumption.

The biggest point of praise in “The Killer,” adapted from a French comic book, is an epic fight-to-the-death between our hired assassin and a hulking “Florida Man.”

You like fights? “All-Time High” has a couple of all-time winners, bone-snapping brawls shot in long, beautifully-choreographed takes. But here, no matter how much blood is spilled and debilitating injuries or even death meted out, it’s mostly played for laughs.

Seriously, “John Wick” stuntman and stuntman/fight-choreographer (here) Amedéo Cazzella, take a bow. The gambling club, gymnasium, apartment and inside-a-kidnapping-van fights here are epic in their own right, damned funny and help make this one of the most entertaining films on Netflix.

Nassim Lyes of “Mayhem!” stars as Youssef, a hunky street hustler with a manic patter that wears out most everyone he encounters. He’s unfiltered, and physically fit enough to get away with being boorish to even a celebrity boxer in a nightclub. Because Algerian-born Youssef used to box back in Belgium.

He lies like he breathes — constantly, rapid-fire patter about this Hermes handbag scheme or that Birkin hustle. He crosses lines and ignores “Where’s your dignity?” insults, because he has none.

Youssef is wearing out his rich live-in girlfriend Yael (Yovel Lewkowski), so much so that all it takes is the wrong joke at her mother’s birthday dinner to sink that. Sure, he’s convinced her his real name is Mikael and that he works for Hermes. But every now and then, “unfiltered” and gauche gets him in trouble

“All you talk about is money,” Yael’s mother gripes to her crypto-crazed son and her second husband (Guillaume Canet). “What will Mikael think of us?”

“That you’re Jews?” he offers. Dude, read the room. And you know, global anti-Semitism coverage.

That’s just who this guy is, a big mouth who can’t get into a poker club without creating a scene. Losing his shirt to a woman he doesn’t find attractive, whom he insults about her “forehead” and “buckteeth” puts him in a mood.

Little does he know that when Yael makes the right decision and dumps him, this equally uncouth “ugly” woman who hustled him at poker will be his nightclub hookup.

Stephanie (French nepo baby Zoé Marchal, who was in “Overdose” with Lyes) is boorish, tomboyish and unconcerned with appearances, including her attire. She “pees with the bathroom door open,” and having an Olympic wrestling (and cheating at it) background is the perfect match for the cheating ex-boxer Youssef.

Not that he’d see that. Not right away. Not that he’d admit it. Hell, he won’t even tell her his real name.

“All-Time High” is about all the trouble that swirls in around them when they start their affair — his financial troubles, lying and “loser” status, her issues with the switchblade-wielding thug Papillion (“Butterfly,” played by Adrien Essamir) who owned that small but high-end gambling club and who has goons at his beck and call.

Some people are going to want to hurt one or both of them, maybe at the same time.

Director and co-writer Julien Hollande — Lyes co-wrote the script — serves up a lively underworld of hustlers and and outcasts, including a pal who rents crummy “kit” cars that look like Ferraris and GT-40s, and drive like worn-out Toyotas. Hollande decided to shoot the over-the-top fights in long takes, a daring choice as when you film in a gym, there are mirrors everywhere. He keeps the tone light, which the joke-littered script ensures with laugh-out loud one-liners and more than a few sight gags.

“I’m such a f—–g moron,” Yael complains at discovering the extent of Youssef’s lies.

“Honey, DON’T say that! You went to fashion school!”

Lyes is hilarious in a part that calls for Vince Vaughn/”Swingers” fast patter, with the added bonus of being an actor who can handle fight choreography with ease.

Marchal gets even bigger laughs simply by being a woman whose looks are insulted and whose liberty and life are physically threatened repeatedly, only for her to unleash headlocks, Japanese arm drags and back body drops (Yeah, I looked them up.) to the viewer’s unexpected delight.

The stunts in this picture are both funny and realistic enough to impress, no mean feat.

Essamir makes a vile villain, with Youssef Ramal standing out as the cousin-henchman who finds that getting his ass kicked is starting to hurt his feelings, but who has limits — unlike cousin “Papillon.”

“Why you keep putting holes in people? You think they’re cheese, or something?”

It’s an action comedy, so for all the violence and actual bones-breaking the film shows us, it’s never as serious as all that and coincidences and classic bits of “that awning/sofa/dumpster just happened to be there” to break this or that death-or-paralyzed fall intervene.

And as this or that unlikely twist in the story or each wild-and-wooly fight makes your eyes roll, there’s always Lyes and Marchal and their great two-fisted, old school feminist chemistry to ensure that “All-Time High” never loses its buzz.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Nassim Lyes, Zoé Marchal, Adrien Essamir and Youssef Ramal

Credits: Directed by Julien Hollande, scripted by Julien Hollande and Nassim Lyes. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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