Attack On Paradise (Fantasia Film Festival 2026)

I think enough time has passed in pop culture for us to stop claiming one movie has utter dominion over a single plot idea or structure, a case in point being Gareth Evans’ The Raid, which isn’t unique enough for the community to claim preferential placement. The World Premiere of Bob Colaers’ Belgian/Dutch movie Attack On Paradise, debuting at Fantasia 2026, deserves more than just derivative footnote treatment, but a quick glance at the Letterboxd listing already shows I’m being too wishful here – oh well.

The film opens with Suleyman (Saïd Boumazoughe), who’s minding his business walking through the grottier end of town when he’s accosted by two police officers, who decide he’s guilty before even giving him a chance. The altercation escalates into him kicking the two officers and killing one of them (with amazing kicks), and then events then jump forward seven years. Suleyman has served his sentence and is both reluctant and eager to leave prison – eager for obvious reasons, but reluctant because, as he puts it, “he’s Moroccan”, and returning home means facing a mother who has plenty of reasons to be furious at him. When he reaches the tower block where she lives, his plan to visit and later help her becomes intertwined with a SWAT team’s efforts to work their way up the building to the penthouse. They’re on a mission to arrest the despotic Prince (Achmed Akkabi), a name earned among the tenants and ironic to the members of his ferociously violent gang – all of whom are camped in the titular multi-storey “Paradise.”

The reason The Raid was titled so is because that was fundamentally all it had, and while the action was incredible, it offered little else. As a piece of drama, Attack On Paradise has far more going for it because it has characters who, although stereotyped, are given reasons to invest in, and through that, there’s a level to the performances beyond the slick Pencak Silat ultra‑violence. Suleyman is a very meek and defensive protagonist for an action movie because his sole goal is to be with his mum, and later get her diabetes medicine – that smallness being more relatable than the standard “action = everything” genre piece. There’s an extra layer here too because we’re discussing a Muslim action hero, and while it’s not often we get this character type in movies outside Asia, it’s representation without pandering as giving Suleyman a more heroically inclined arc would ring false. What Attack On Paradise does well is treat Suleyman’s identity as a lived reality rather than a marketing hook his Moroccan background shaping how he’s perceived and how others respond to him. In a genre that often flattens characters into archetypes, seeing a protagonist whose cultural identity informs the stakes without overwhelming them is refreshing. Sure, it’s not much, but when the lion’s share of classic Asian martial arts movies have plots as simple as “those are fighting words, let’s fight”, these small character moments matter.

It’s a pity that Attack On Paradise doesn’t extend that level of empathy to its other cast members, as the sole survivor of the SWAT team (Clara Cleymans), has a has a daughter at home with no one else to look after her and the “it’s my first day on the job” backstory. The underbosses fare no better as we get a quick slideshow of who they are, but the one with a historic connection to Suleyman is left frustratingly underwritten. It feels like it’s leading up to something … but nothing.

The elephant in the room is The Raid connection and sure, if you want to make that comparison then it’s there, but Colaers leans far more into a videogame structure, with Suleyman moving up and down the tower depending on his goal at any given moment. Once you throw in a level boss you have a framework that dates back as far as Bruce Lee’s tragically climactic Game of Death – and probably further than that as there’s even a reference to the Chinese legend. The Game of Death-like boss structure injects a real freshness into Attack On Paradise, with each encounter feeling distinct and requiring a different skillset to overcome. Add in a huge stunt involving a crashing elevator and you have a movie shooting for more than Evans dared in either of The Raid movies (and I say this as a fan). The fights range from a knife duel in the dinge, to a night‑vision POV brawl with two drug addicts, to a bar fight in what’s ostensibly a strip club, and a finale that nods again to Game of Death – only instead of Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar towering over Suleyman we get professional kickboxer Jamal Ben Saddik.

Attack On Paradise is far from a classic action movie, but seeing a melding of Dutch, Belgian, and Moroccan sensibilities in a traditionally Far East Asian sub‑genre gives it plenty of fun that’s buoyed by an emotional throughline movies like this usually treat as a distraction. In a genre that, outside Asia, rarely has Muslim protagonists, Suleyman’s presence adds a small but welcome point of distinction. My ultimate criticism isn’t that it’s a lesser echo of a more popular movie, but that the fight choreography and plot/world‑building feel limited. Those elements that should have been fleshed out as the blocks are there, so either strip them out to focus on the pure primal fury of modern action cinema, or give the ensemble the flesh in the game they deserve. As it stands, Attack On Paradise ultimately slips through the cracks of its numerous ambitions.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – ATTACK ON PARADISE