Jean-François Richet

Jean-François Richet (birthname: Jean-François Richet) is a veteran French filmmaker who specializes in action and high-octane entertainment. His feature debut, État des lieux (1995), was nominated for the Best Feature Film Debut César Award and co-starred by Cyrille Autin and Emmanuelle Bercot. His breakthrough feature (as director, writer, and editor) was Ma 6-T va crack-er (1997), one of the earliest French films with a hip-hop soundtrack and filmed in and around Richet’s birthplace, the troubled Paris suburb of Meaux.

Richet cast Virginie Ledoyen (who had a supporting role in Ma 6-T va crack-er) in the lead of his third feature, De l’amour (2001), co-starring Yazid Ait and Mar Sodupe. Jean-François Richet’s Hollywood debut was a loose remake of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), starring Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, and John Leguizamo, but barely made back its budget with a global return of $35.3 million.

Perhaps Richet’s biggest project was the two-part crime biopic epic, Mesrine (2008), split into two features, subtitled Killer Instinct and Public Enemy No. 1, both starring Vincent Cassel as the notorious gangster Jacques Mesrine, with Ludivine Sagnier, Michel Duchaussoy, Myriam Boyer, and Gerard Depardieu, and earning Richet a César for Best Director (as well as Cassel for Best Actor).

Seven years passed until Jean-François Richet’s next movie as director and co-writer, Un moment d’egarement (2015), a remake of Claude Berri’s 1977 comedy-drama of the same title (itself remade in a 1984 Hollywood version, Blame It on Rio, directed by Stanley Donen), co-starring Cassel and Francois Cluzet and grossing $6 million. Richet returned to his action roots with the French-funded and American-cast and written crime thriller, Blood Father (2016), starring Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, Diego Luna, Michael Parks, and William H. Macy, but grossing far short ($6.9 million) of its $15 million budget.

Richet reunited with Cassel for the lavish ($25.6 million) Napoleonic era drama about renowned crime figure Francois Vidocq (played by Cassel), The Emperor of Paris (2018), with Olga Kurylenko, Fabrice Luchini, and Denis Lavant, but failed to make back its cost with a mere $8.6 million box office. Jean-François Richet made his second Hollywood-produced action movie, Plane (2023), starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter and marking Richet’s first significant commercial hit in several years, with a global box office projected to double its $25 million budget.