Okay. Just imagine for a sec that 24 were — work with us here — a French New Wave film.
Beautifully-coiffed, but crucially helpless, blonde in bath towel: Millions of people are going to die … and we only have 24 hours to save them!
Blase half-dressed hubby: Yeah, but, oh, it’s Saturday. Then he lifts a copy of The Stranger back up to his face and adds, 24 hours is tons of time. I could do save them in two.
The lady over-protests, as women are wont to do, so he gets all existentialist on her ass: Aren’t we all going to die eventually?
Outfitted with Brigitte Bardot knockoffs, abstract antiheroes and — in the instances of 8 Kilometres — a painfully mod ’60s style battle of linguists, Stella Artois re-imagines three contemporary action flicks in the style of old-school French cinema. The videos are best seen with the stunna shades off, a glass of vermouth, and an extra-long unfiltered cigarette, held in that special way.
o Dial Hard:
o 8 Kilometres:
The effort’s called Smooth Originals, and we’d argue it’s a less incendiary spin on Diesel’s random-ass Pete the Meat Puppet and SFW XXX stuff: fun to watch AND the perfect brand persona reinforcer.
The campaign manifest reads, “Remember the days when men were strong and silent, women were chic and sophistique, and the action was as smooth as our 4% triple filtered beer? Formidable!”
In classy Stella style, fans are invited to download and share the videos at will. (The vintage posters rock too.) Vive le cinema triple filter, and props to BuzzFeed for passing this on to us.
