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There are no trilled notes, no stirring group musical numbers, no talk of castles on clouds in French-Malian director Ladj Ly’s directorial debut. You will hear, however, the songs of angry men, expressed in a way that drives home the point of their rage and rancor. It is not a coincidence that his cop procedural shares the same name of Victor Hugo’s socially conscious 19th century novel/Broadway musical source material; like the literary landmark, it also takes place in Montfermeil, the township where Les Miz‘s heroes and villains strutted and fretted.

The new film Les Misérables may take only passing glances to Victor Hugo’s text but it does boast a synopsis worthy of the sheer exuberance of that title. Hugo wrote his classic novel in the early-to-mid 19th century, but this film couldn’t be more wired-in to contemporary Paris if it tried. In it, we see the fuse of gang warfare lit when a young man, named Issa (Issa Perica), steals a lion cub from a traveling circus. Issa is a black kid in Saint-Denis, a buzzing multi-cultural suburb in the north of the French capital. The circus owners are Gypsy travelers. The most seemingly reasonable community leader is an ex-con turned Muslim Brotherhood sage named Salah (Almamy Kanoute), who runs the local kebab shop. The unofficial mayor of the block (Steve Tientcheu) wears not a shirt and tie but a jersey of the French national team with “Le Maire” on the back.