Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

An action-packed slog

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

"The Connection" is a dull crime flick with many of the usual clichés, eg. a cop who can't do what he needs to do to catch the bad guy because of the bureaucracy in his way, and his obsession with the case straining his home life and making his wife leave him. How many times have we seen these things, and through the lens of a wobbly camera to boot? The main character is a cliché and it is impossible to care anything about him. Instead I felt sorry for the actor trying his darnedest with material so trite.In one scene the cops arrest a guy who was just about the kill the bad guy for them. The movie doesn't even acknowledge this. It's like it's on a completely different page to the viewer. If you were police after a crimelord, and you had to stop someone you knew was probably going to kill the crimelord and himself in the process, wouldn't you be a bit frustrated that the constraints of your job stopped you from letting one problem solve another? Wouldn't the crimelord express mocking gratitude? This was a point of connection with the audience the movie squanders completely.One of the few interesting points in this movie is that the actor playing the good guy and the actor playing the bad guy look almost identical. I couldn't tell them apart. They have the same features, same haircut, everything. The bad guy is slightly shorter than the good guy. That was my only way of telling them apart.As for telling the movie apart from any other cops vs criminals movie, you're on your own.

The trailer got me really interested, especially because it seemed to promise a fierce duel between Dujardin & Lellouche, not unlike the memorable Al Pacino/De Niro duel in "Heat", which I still consider to be the absolute best gangster movie ever! Well, it didn't really deliver on those promises... Dujardin was great as a relentless judge, but unfortunately I thought that Lellouche lacked the kind of machismo and presence that would have made him a strong opponent to Dujardin. He wasn't convincing as a feared and respected drug kingpin. Without what should have been its strongest point, the film fails to keep us interested, mainly because of its uninspired plot and dialogs as well as its length. Because of all this, "La French" feels like a missed opportunity. Too bad, I really wanted to love this one! If you wanna watch a great french gangster movie, I recommend "L'immortel" or "Truands". 6/10

This story, inspired by actual events that occurred in Marseilles, has already been told in the early eighties: LE JUGE, starring Jacques Perrin, as the lead character. Well, this one is more ambitious, starring Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lelouche and Benoit Magimel as a supporting character. Those three are great figures of the new french crime movie industry. This tale takes place in Marseilles, South of France, during the mid seventies, and describes the dog fight, the terrific struggle between a hard boiled, ruthless, untouchable judge against a no less ambitious, greedy, smart and fierce drug ring leader. Jean Dujardin plays the judge and Gilles Lelouche his Némésis. The sequence between the two of them is outstanding, although it never occurred in real life. Curiously, in this movie, audiences may feel empathy for the judge but for the gangster as well. No real hero or true villain here. And I loved another gripping scene, the one with Dujardin in a phone booth, begging his wife - the beautiful Celine Salette - to come back to him. This scene was improvised by Dujardin.

If I could only recommend you go and see one film this year, The Connection would be it.The film follows the true story of the rise and fall of Pierre Michel "The Judge", played by The Artist's Oscar winning Jean Dujardin, against the Marseillaise mafia gang The French Connection in the 1970s. The story had already been put to cinema in The Judge (1984), but this time the story's been redone much more ambitiously.It's a typical good guy versus bad guy story, but it's the bells and whistles in this film that really make it so much more than that. The director achieves the perfect combination of action, drama, comedy and tragedy with the irrepressible Mediterranean sun beating down on every day time scene in the film. The Mediterranean settings give the film a sense of glamour and surrealism, juxtaposing the surreal nature of life as a successful drug trafficker in the 1970s, passing time between seaside villas and the biggest nightclub in Marseille.This is film making at its best - it's as if the screen writer and director Cédric Jimenez pulled out an old school book of film making craft written in the 1970s and followed all the old rules to perfection to bring about not only a brilliant piece of cinematic entertainment, but also of art. This film is a living, breathing and intimate nostalgic reinvention of the 1970s and a just and accurate portrayal of a real gangster story, with some liberties in representing the character's private lives.Cédric Jimenez grew up himself in Marseille in the 1970s and says that the story of the Judge has run through his veins his whole life. He has wanted to make this film as long as he has wanted to be a film maker, starting his career initially as a documentary maker. He chose to shoot the whole film with a hand held camera, which gives the film it's intimate and raw feeling.It is an absolute viewing pleasure to be immersed back into the 1970s era and the sets and costumes have been rendered to perfection, to every last detail. The velour furniture, the dingy nightclubs, the glamorous dresses and old style police surveillance technologies are a delight to rediscover. The cowboy style of policing in the 1970s makes the action scenes much more exciting than anything depicting the risk-averse 2000s - the only person in the film wearing even a bullet proof vest is the gang leader Gaëtan "Tany" Zamper (Gilles Lellouche).There are countless unforgettable scenes in this film, the dialogue is witty, the action is edgy and the acting is superb. Another highlight is the film's soundtrack featuring endless classics from the 1970s (Blondie, Kim Wilde and the Velvet Underground) and tunes by composer Guillaume Roussel that reflect the film soundtracks of the time (for example, his tune Meurtre de fou). It can be tough to watch a sub-titled film for 2h15min, but believe me it's worth it.