Tags: Bernard Farcy | Emma Wiklund | Frederic Diefenthal | Georges Neri | Manuela Gourary | Marion Cotillard | Samy Naceri

The movie that proves the French can make good films, but only by using the Hollywood formula of bank heists and high speed car chases.

Which is, by the way, elegantly spectacular and the shoot outs bloodless, just slightly tinged by a sense of comical genius that only the French have really mastered.

Taking other cues from the late nineties film trends, Taxi (Original French Version) is also a buddy movie and a love story, full of family values and positive ideals. That would be the demographic strategist in me talking, but it means none of those things.

Daniel is the son of crippled car racer, who finally gets his taxi license after 6 years of delivering pizzas and setting scooter land speed records.

Moving up in life with his first love, a trickled out Peugeot with James Bond accoutrements, is the welcome readiness of his sweetheart to finally make love to him after a couple years of waiting.

In an unpredictable and realistic portrayal, things keep getting in the way of their desired consummation, things like jobs, being recruited into a police task force by the policeman son of his very first customer, and a gang of brazen and stylish German bank robbers called the Mercedes Gang.

Daniel finds clues left and right and always knows where to look, and his bumbling recruiter seems quite eager to empress his superior, a real fit German woman, when all they've really shared are awkward bumbling exchanges.

There are lots of twists and turns in this fine film, and the chase scenes even slicker than Gone in 60 Seconds, and the French sense of braggadocio is audacious and tres manifique.