French film industry seems to be a specialist in this kind of social, crime and drama mix up, and not purely rough pure crime flick, maybe this explained by the slow but surely fall of Olivier Marchal, who was the new pioneer in the crime genre in the early 2000's. Last week, I commented SENTINELLE SUD, not the same topic, but also a melt of petty hoodlums, gypsies, social life conditions of French people...Social, is the key word for French cinema now. This one insists on the awful condition in which the French police is now; many suicides, psychological breakdowns explained by thousands of overtime work which remain unpaid, domestic problems for cops in their private lives - because of their schedule: shifts at any time - much much stress, because they become more and more despised by the population, petty hoodlums don't hesitate to kill a cop for any reason, even the most meaningless.... So you see, there is a real, huge, gigantic faintness in the French police force now, and this movie is about this problem. It is very well done, simple, daring. Worth watching. A French police drama in the Joseph Wambaugh's style, he who wrote the novel that inspired Richard Fleisher's THE NEW CENTURIONS. Ping Pong's character steals the wole show, a poignant, terrific character. Far far from clichés. And precisely for this reason, it may not be realistic.
