The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

...of a different Paris, different love story and images of cops. a precise and impressive film. for the portraits of characters. for the science to escape from cliches circle, for the inspired way to tell a dirty, insignificant, ordinary story, using each of its nuances in admirable manner. a woman. and her man. and the Police as the shark in the essence of relationship who could be normal. it is easy to define it as a film with a great cast , from Maurice Ronet and young Tcheky Karyo to Nathalie Baye. but the authentic star of film remains Phililipe Leotard, giving a dramatic performance. so, a revelation. at each new view. because it represents the realistic portrait of a world who seems, from so many (American) films, well known.

One of the great French bad-cop bad-cop thrillers, which I remember vividly from years ago. I love that the supposed criminals were so well characterized, not like today's shoot-em-ups. Recommended, and I will buy it again, if it has subtitles. (I speak French, but it's sort of rusty, and the fascinating Parisian slang can be hard to follow.)

When it was released in 1982, I considered it was the best french crime flick since the death of Jean Pierre Melville, with maybe the exception of some Alain Corneau's flicks - POLICE PYTHON 357 and LE CHOIX DES ARMES. Don't forget that Corneau was called the heir of Melville...Speaking of Corneau, I consider Series NOIRE as a film noir, instead of a crime feature. Back to LA BALANCE, this film was the last crime movie, at least the best one, made before the rise of Olivier Marchall, twenty years later. Of course, just before LA BALANCE, or at the same time, we had the three Jean Claude Missiean's films: TIR GROUPE, RONDE DE NUIT and LA BASTON, all three efficient programmers, but not at the scale of the Bob Swaim's piece of work. Yes, folks, after LA BALANCE, we had nearly nothing Worth, in the crime film kind. Oh, I admit we received LE COUSIN, also made by Corneau, and the superb J'IRAI AU PARADIS CAR L'ENFER EST ICI. Both from 1997.Yes, LA BALANCE remains a real masterpiece, even after all those years. And no one has mentioned that this was a french movie, made in France by an American director, as was Jules Dassin's RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES, thirty years earlier. And I will finish by announcing that the great Florent Emilio Siri, the director of NID DE GUEPES, HOSTAGE, L'ENNEMI INTIME and CLOCLO will direct the remake of this masterpiece. It will take place in Marseilles. I read his interview. I AM SO EXCITED,, folks !!!!!And we all know that in France, since a couple of years, there was many affairs of rotten cops, lead executives of the force, accused of corrupttion, or too much "friendship" with the mob. And this movie will talk about all this. Boundaries between cops and gangsters. Boundaries as thick as cigarette paper, where every one swims in the very same water. The same swamp. Let's wait for the remake. I already know it will be a real killing.

Gritty, nasty, overlong, at times silly, at times boring and very very over rated. If you want plenty of action with love interest, then the US turns them out all the time and if you want sex and violence, then for this sort of movie, Italy is where you should head. This seems to be stuck in the middle, lots of horrible guys doing nasty things to each other and scenes of 'true love', I don't think so, trust the French! The setting on the mucky streets of Belleville, now much cleaned up, is fine but when you set up a virtually plot less movie, it just to have a bit of style, that little bit of something to keep you interested. This moves so fast at the start that it looks as if all is going to be well but somewhere around half way it dawns that the film is going to carry on like this all the time.