Les Misérables

Les Miserables is a very well crafted movie, with excellent photography and acting, able to keep the narrative tension at good levels all along the story, with a very dramatic ending. The reason why I left the theatre with somewhat mixed feelings is that, if the movie had the ambition to elevate itself above the pure police procedural and to offer a point of view on an extremely delicate theme like the inflammatory social, racial and religious tensions of the Paris banlieue, well on this level the movie does not deliver. Les Miserables shows more than interprets, it engages the spectator without going under the surface of the issue. The post credit quote from Victo Hugo ("Remember this, my friends: there are not bad grass or bad men, just bad growers") just reinforced my doubts, as the movie focussed on the bad grass and not at all on the issue of "bad growers".

The movie is very good but left me a bit unsatisfied. It is well shot with good acting from all the actors. But it seems like the story was mixed with La Haine, Banlieue 13 Ultimatum and City of God. The bad cop/good cop story line along with the outsider point of view of one of the policemen felt cliché (as some parts of the dialogue). It has a good message and I could clearly see the intentions of the director in making this movie. But, as someone familiar with French cinema that shows Paris suburbs, police brutality and racism in France in general, I haven't seen anything new here. And I know there's still a lot in those issues that hasn't been shown in movies yet. As this movie is nominated for an oscar I was expecting something more.

Just in case there was any confusion, this Les Misérables has no singing Russell Crowe's or period costumes but is a film that shares the same power and humanity as Victor Hugo's famed novel that has spawned countless stage and screen adaptations.

Nominated at this years Academy Awards in the best Foreign Language film category and announcing the arrival of a very special directional talent in the form of Ladj Ly in the process, Les Misérables is an incendiary and white knuckle thriller that is set in the director's childhood neighborhood of Montfermeil in Paris, a melting pot of different cultures and beliefs that are waiting to explode around a small team of specialist police officers who patrol these streets in hopes of maintaining order.

Based off his own short film of the same name and starring its three lead actors Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djebril Zonga, this version of Ladj Ly's Les Misérables rarely lets up for a single minute as we follow Bonnard's new to the team Ruiz whose been partnered up with Manenti and Zonga's veteran officers who know the streets they roam like the back of their hands and whose fragile state of minds and humanity comes to the forefront around a seriously dangerous situation that starts around, of all things, a small lion cub.

Filmed in a virtuoso manner that places the viewer right in the thick of the action as we are introduced to these mean streets where the working class, the youth and the criminally minded clash on a daily basis, Les Misérables is an electrifying watch as it ramps up to near unbearable levels of tension as the films various characters converge in unpredictable and confronting ways.

Wonderfully played by its main cast that includes a hugely impressive performance from young actor Issa Perica as the tales important figure Issa, Les Misérables puts many Hollywood police dramas/thrillers to shame as it bounces around the locales of Montfermeil and establishes all of its key players with grounded backgrounds and motivations, building a world and story that feels cut from real life, a tale that comes from the heart and experience of a lived in life bought forward in a stunning manner through film.

Final Say -

Not the Les Misérables many know and love but one that will hopefully find an audience just the same, Ladj Ly's stunning feature debut is one of the finest police thrillers of the last decade and an insightful look at modern day Paris also. An absolute must-watch.

4 1/2 kebab shops out of 5

Les Miserables - 2020 French crime drama on Netflix. I've not seen the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel but I reckon you couldn't get two films further apart. 3 policemen - two of whom have been brought up in the tough Parisian neighbourhoods in which they patrol. The other, a rookie fresh from leafy Cherbourg definitely has not. Rookie does not like the rough tactics of his two colleagues. And neither do we. But he - and we - soon come to learn that it isn't as clear cut as we think. The softly softly approach may not stand the test of time. This is a bleak film about a bleak world. And it's absolutely right that there's no easy answers. There is no sugar coating. And maybe rookie is just naive. And maybe we are too. My kind of film. A thought provoking 8 out of ten.

I walked into the theater to see Les Miserables late this afternoon with no expectations.

Maybe a thought that this was a modern 'woke' version of Hugo's classic. It isn't. It's a gritty, fast paced, police procedural set in the banlieues of Paris. Unflinching about what the police find there, and how the police act and react to a Paris that tourists never see.

Sobering and revolutionary.

A stunning find and a great movie.