Les Misérables (2019)
This film is more a portrait of an environment, how circumstances shapes people and less about individual characters. Fittingly framed with quotes from Victor Hugo. The police trio falls into well known stereotypes with the aggressive one, the complacent one and the new guy who still has some idealism but also very much out of his depth. The main conflict they are trying to solve is a genuine attempt at avoiding a larger conflict, and their experience with the city and that they know practically everybody could have set them up for finding a peaceful solution, but the lack of mutual trust and years of resentment makes for a situation where no group can arrive at that solution.
This type of conflict between police forces and dominantly black neighborhoods in the Paris suburbs is something I only hear about when it gets big violent enough to reach the news here, so the insight this films gives into that was valuable in its own right. It is apt to compare this to The Wire. While there a clear good and bad actions depicted here that aren’t shown with much ambiguity, the ambiguity still forms itself when the whole picture is revealed in the end. What I think the film lacks is something that go beyond merely the observational and showing the problems. It isn’t destabilizing my view or doing anything really to challenge my thinking.
Rating: 3.5