You’ll watch it with a smile on your face: Luc Besson’s action romance has just arrived on Prime Video

The story follows the leap of an ordinary person into an emotional risk zone driven by haste and fascination; in “June and John”, Luke Stanton Eddy and Matilda Price star under the direction of Luc Besson. The opening establishes a faded everyday life, in which decisions are postponed until an unexpected encounter shifts the axis and imposes movement. From this trigger, the narrative prefers the continuous present to explanatory regression, and the effect is that of a road that is drawn while the characters run. This time frame gives vitality to actions and focuses attention on what each gesture may cost in the next minute.

Besson films with economy of resources and uses locations that preserve city noises, unstable lights and textures that convey urgency. Shots close to bodies and surfaces suggest speed, while cuts synchronized to the beat of the music push perception forward. There is no gratuitous visual luxury: the design of the scenes seeks the essentials of each situation and explores diagonals, backlights and reflections to mark the constant displacement. The clear preference for paths, corners and walkways highlights a cinema interested in the dramatic power of urban movement, transforming accelerated steps into a declaration of intentions.

The central pair works as a dramatic engine. John appears as an exhausted man, polite to avoid attracting attention; June embodies the spark that calls for haste, negotiating risk with a wide smile and a keen eye for shortcuts. The chemistry between Luke Stanton Eddy and Matilda Price is born from reactions and silences, without resorting to self-explanatory speeches. Looks, small hesitations and decisions made on impulse communicate complicity in formation. This quick understanding justifies adherences that would otherwise seem implausible, and makes each change of route seem a direct consequence of the trust that is built in a fragmented way.

Music plays a driving role. Tracks chosen to mark mood swings and passages of time are added to a sound design attentive to sirens, engines and footsteps, creating the feeling that the world continues to move forward even when the protagonists stop to breathe. In some sections, the score replaces speeches and highlights silent decisions, maintaining the tempo and underlining the precariousness of the moment. When the sound recedes and silence opens up, the film finds moments of vulnerability that reveal the weight accumulated by recent choices.

Not everything remains at the same level. The script insists on reiterating the conflict between impulse and consequence, varying scenery and intensity, but frequently returning to the same impasse. In certain passages, elongated dialogues explain what the staging had already clearly suggested. This repetition takes on vigor in the core, when the expectation for new dramatic folds grows. Even so, Besson finds visual solutions that renew interest: framings that isolate the duo in large spaces, mirror games that diminish the figures in relation to their surroundings and cuts that make the passage of a corridor a small triumph against inertia.

The presence of a concrete threat does not transform the film into a work of continuous chase, but it adds thickness to the novel. The risk stops being just a sensation and takes on a material form, which reorganizes the couple’s priorities and accelerates decisions. This change does not require large set pieces; just remember that the time available can shrink at any moment. The result is a state of alert that keeps the narrative alive, preventing the initial euphoria from becoming routine and allowing the viewer to assess immediate costs.

Modest resources, far from limiting, favor discoveries. Barely recognizable streets, simple interiors and common objects make the city a territory of improvisation. There is inventiveness in making the car an extension of hasty decisions, the stairs an invitation to rush and any door the possibility of turning around. This approach gives the film a freshness that speaks to lighter phases of the director’s career, when curiosity for everyday gestures and rhythms guided as much as ambition for grand scenes. The gaze here focuses on what fits in one’s hand: a key, a cell phone, a ticket, enough elements to spark situations.

The performances focus on physicality. Luke Stanton Eddy finds in his hunched body and tired eyes the mark of a man without a horizon, and this restraint makes the late spark that leads him out of line convincing. Matilda Price, in turn, communicates calculation and tenderness in alternating doses, avoiding the stereotype of the chaotic muse by outlining someone who knows her own limitations and chooses to move forward despite them. Together, they build a partnership that convinces not through eloquence, but through the way they complement each other when making decisions, gesture by gesture.

Without resorting to grandiloquent revelations, the film proposes that love, here, is taking the lead in the face of a clock that never lets up. With each new choice, the protagonists test how far they can go without losing the little that still guarantees them protection. The city, with its flows and noises, becomes an active supporting role, offering shortcuts and traps. When one plan fails, another presents itself, and this succession of attempts holds the grace of improvisation and the risk of haste. Interest arises from this alternation between euphoria and caution, a feeling of chance and calculation.

In the final stretch, the narrative slows down enough for the accumulated weight to appear on the characters’ faces. It is not about judging choices, but about measuring consequences that no longer fit into slogans about freedom. The film supports the idea that a few intense days can change the memory of a lifetime, without selling easy solutions. The last curve points to a horizon that combines lucidity and desire, remembering that urgency has a cost and that, even so, certain encounters justify the bet. This combination of risk and tenderness sustains the memory that remains after the lights come on.