Entertainment

‘The Prey’ review

There’s no ironclad rule against cobbling together an action movie, a police procedural, a serial-killer saga and a prison flick, but if you’re going to do it, the seams shouldn’t be as obvious as they are in the latest film from Eric Valette (“One Missed Call”).

The takeaway: If your prison cellmate is about to get beaten to a pulp, stand aside. Franck Adrien (Albert Dupontel) steps in to defend the nerdy Jean-Louis Maurel (Stéphane Debac) — but Maurel is a serial killer. Maurel is released and, armed with Adrien’s personal information, proceeds to frame him.

What ensues are chases, and Adrien’s prison break, and hard-core violence, and yet another psycho-stalks-adolescent subplot, and police staring at maps of where dead bodies were found and saying with reassuring certitude, “It’s definitely a serial killer.” Dupontel wears the same scowl whether he’s fending off a screwdriver attack in prison or sitting up in bed after sex with his wife.

It’s watchable but absolutely no big deal, although you wouldn’t know that from the drum-heavy score, so loud and militaristic that someone could reuse it for a documentary about the Battle of the Bulge.

The best compensation for sitting through this silliness is Alice Taglioni as the primary cop. She doesn’t look as though she could physically subdue a dry martini, but the actress brings sparkling earnestness to a stock character, and I’d back her against a misunderstood convict any day of the week.