L.627 (1992)

You’d think after three decades* of increasingly gritty docu-style Lives-of-the-Cops films, this down-and-dirty look at an underfunded Narcotics Unit (CIC) in some out-of-the-way Paris nab (not a tourist in sight) would have lost its edge.  Yet, almost the reverse is the case in critic/filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier’s superb ensemble piece.  No police procedural, more a systemic view at a failing system, and the characters who find work-arounds to strict rules & regulations to keep it functioning.  Didier Bezace is the gifted investigator, always in trouble with superiors, but too well connected to his personal pack of criminally dicey informers to spend more than token stints in office purgatory assignments.  Supported and thwarted by talented, if lazy slobs, his co-workes more interested in hitting quotas than in solving crimes or social problems, Bezace might come off as too exemplary, but Tavernier sets limits.  Dealers who won’t give up suppliers get physically abused; hookers & illegal immigrants cultivated to work as informers; even an emotional attachment to a hooker/addict for times when Bezace isn’t working his side-gig of filming weddings to afford finer things for his wife and little girl.  Remarkably, Tavernier is able to give nearly as much background & detail on a dozen cohorts without stopping narrative for exposition.  Standouts include the sole female trouper, a very tough cookie; the annoyingly juvenile group leader; and special attention to partner Philippe Torreton in the first of many outstanding perfs for Tavernier.*  Using less of the charging style Tavernier often favored with cinematographer Alain Choquart, the steadier camera work helps us keep lines of action and that big characters list straight while laying out enough action and cases to fill two seasons of a series ‘bible.’   Too compressed to lose a sense of discovery, and too well acted to develop the tics, tricks & corny traits series actors incrementally add to characterizations.  (Note: *After two decades, here's a more detailed second MAKSQUIBS Write-Up.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Torreton gives nothing but Gold Standard work in all his Tavernier projects, never more so than in his award-winning WWI portrait in CAPTAINE CONAN/’96.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Tavernier also lucked out making this in 1992, not long before out-dated analogue equipment began giving way to less cinematically congenial digital tools.  Not only no computers, no electric typewriters as they were considered dicey in light of wildcat strikes that could shut down power at any time.