'K.O.' (2025) Movie Review

It makes too much sense to cast Ciryl Gane in an action movie. On one hand, he’s a professional MMA fighter, a heavyweight no less. At six-foot-five, he’s a 250 pound wall of muscly giant, with a unique blend of physicality and martial arts acumen to more than sell an on-screen fight. On the other hand, however, he also has an adorable baby face, complete with a goofy smile that often makes it difficult to take him seriously as a badass. It's hard to say this massive, scary dude is cute, but…he kind of is. Fortunately French director Antoine Blossier knows how to make good use of both of these facets in his new movie, K.O.

 

Gane stars as Bastien, who is, of all things, an MMA fighter. After accidentally killing his opponent in the cage, which happens way more frequently in movies than in reality, he retreats into a solitary, self-imposed exile. Later, the dead man’s widow tracks him down. Her teenage son, Leo (Maleaume Paquin), has fallen in with a bad crowd and is missing. Propelled by guilt, Bastien pummels his way through the French underworld, searching for the boy. On his journey, he teams up with Kenza (Alice Belaidi), a driven, diminutive cop who plays by her own rules and will stop at nothing to take down a vicious gang with whom she has a history. You can tell they’re bad because they wear masks with skulls on them.

 

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The juxtaposition of Bastien and Kenza does a lot of the heavy lifting here. They’re a mismatched pair to be sure. He’s a towering behemoth while she’s five-foot-nothing; he’s a gentle giant who doesn’t want to hurt anyone and only uses violence as a last resort, and she teeters on the verge of unleashing an ass-whooping at any given moment. In reality, she’s much more of the gritty loose cannon you expect from this type of movie. He, in comparison, has the good sense to run away from a bunch of hoods running after him with machetes. Gane and Belaidi have an easy chemistry on screen, and while neither is asked to stretch their range very far, they do what the script requires and are fun to watch together in the moments when they’re not administering, or receiving beatings.

 

Blossier clearly flaunts his influences. There’s a neon-lit nightclub fight scene straight out of the John Wick playbook. The climax builds to a police station shootout a las Assault on Precinct 13—the score also often apes Carpenter and the film even ends on track from his Lost Themes solo record. Even the search-for-redemption and sordid-past-with-the-villains arcs are things you’ve seen other places. There’s not much in the way of subtlety, it’s quite clear who’s good, who’s bad, who is clean, and who is dirty.  

 

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Overall, K.O. is a nice looking, well-shot, well-constructed picture, though it’s very clear from the jump exactly what kind of movie they’re interested in making. It doesn’t rewrite the recipe, but it’s self-aware enough to poke some fun at the genre and not take itself too seriously as it delivers a tasty enough action treat that does just enough to differentiate itself from the pack. Add in excellent fight choreography, unusual bits of inspired violence, and a run time of 86 minutes (realistically it’s 79 or 80 without the credits), and this is an enjoyable way for an action fanatic to pass the time. [Grade: B-]