Avis des critiques

This is a spy drama in the downbeat tradition of John le Carré — it doesn’t glamorize espionage. Genre elements push the narrative forward, but they mostly function as a means to frame a character study.

“Ghost Trail” is an intimate study of trauma that plays with the gripping suspense of a globetrotting spy thriller... a difficult balance to achieve, both narratively and tonally, but director and co-writer Jonathan Millet does it with a sure and intuitive touch in his feature filmmaking debut.

Millet’s film pursues truthful hyperrealism and sets up a premise with a compelling range of threads, before somewhat buckling under its own weight and settling for a firmly, frustratingly anodyne final catharsis.

It’s a potent idea for a revenge plot, rendered by Mr. Millet (and his co-screenwriter, Florence Rochat) in a doggedly unspectacular style, reminiscent at times of John le Carré but infused with contemporary alienation and ambiguities.

Bessa’s brooding performance, which conveys devastating inner struggles without appearing clichéd, adds to the mystery of this first act. Millet keeps his cards close, slowly and inventively revealing the stakes.

Ghost Trail, a rigorous portrait of grief and acceptance that contains the broken and perhaps mended heart of a political thriller.

Millet is noble in its avoidance of sensationalism and rendering of Syrian refugees as more than helpless victims. But his film falls short of its intentions because it spends so much time defining itself by what it isn’t supposed to be.

Ghost Trail has a unique, important, yet uncommonly gentle voice that wants to leave the viewer with a lot of loaded questions concerning one of modern history’s darkest corners.

The subtle, yet intense, observations on trauma and vengeance slice through with precision in the hands of a very competent filmmaker. Despite not being as much of a spy thriller as one might’ve expected, Ghost Trail is thrilling enough in its own way, and should cement Millet as a talent to watch.

Millet runs out of ideas to keep the audience completely hooked on the narrative. [But] For the most part, Ghost Trail remains engaging enough to make us intrigued about where it is heading and the exploration of a refugee’s broken psyche thanks to the solid performances...

We witness a wide range of themes (a screenplay written by the director and Florence Rochat) that the film cleverly disguises in a blend of romance and documentary, heady methodical action and suggestive psychology, for a spellbinding result that holds great promise for the rest of the filmmaker's career.

Millet’s first fiction feature, “Ghost Trail,” furthers the examination of people in exile he’d previously undertaken as a documentary filmmaker, reapproaching this subject matter as the driving force of a taut, if contrived, psychological thriller.