Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Les Misérables on Amazon Prime, a Contemporary Cop Drama With Victor Hugo’s Thematic Backbone

Amazon Prime’s Les Misérables is only tangentially related to the ubiquitous musical inspired by Victor Hugo’s classic novel. It’s set in Montfermeil, the same French suburb as the original story, and is also about its poor, working-class residents. But it’s a modern-day cop drama inspired by director/co-writer Ladj Ly’s upbringing in the area. It made a splash at Cannes in 2019, where it won the Jury Prize and scored a U.S. distribution deal with Amazon. It also somewhat controversially was France’s official Oscar submission, which earned it a nomination — leading many of us to wonder if it was worthy of bumping the universally beloved Portrait of a Lady on Fire from that spotlight.

LES MISERABLES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Montfermeil is a depressing place, a concrete jungle stacked with project housing surrounded by urban blight. Issa (Issa Perica), a boy of maybe 12 or 13, and his friends take the train to Paris proper to celebrate the country’s World Cup soccer victory, then return to engage in mildly delinquent and destructive behavior. The kids have yet to be assimilated into the area’s territorial “organizations” — Gypsy circus performers, Muslim groups, etc. — but they’re aware of them, and on the fringe of their business.

Police routinely prowl Montfermeil wearing plainclothes and carrying riot gear. Stephane (Damien Bonnard) is new to the force, assigned to join a pair of cops known for their unconventional tactics. Chris (Alexis Manenti) is an aggressive, motormouthed cretin who likes to hassle kids and frisk teenage girls. He embraces his nickname, Pink Pig, and saddles Stephane with his own, Greaser, much to his annoyance. Gwada (Djebril Zonga) is more reasonable, but complicit in Chris’ constant bullshit.

Issa and another kid, Buzz (Al-Hassan Ly), play key roles in Stephane’s challenging first day on the job. A lion cub from the Gypsies’ circus goes missing, and Zorro (Raymond Lopez) slings slur-filled accusations at the black people in the neighborhood, led by a man known as La Meire, or The Mayor (Steve Tientcheu). Chris, Gwada and Stephane jump in to moderate the conversation before a full-blown ethnic war ignites. The cops’ search for the cub results in a clash with Issa and his friends, and Buzz, who tends to film all sorts of things he shouldn’t with a camera-drone, captures Chris and Gwada as their “unconventional tactics” go brutally awry. And there stands Stephane, smack in the middle of a broiling mess.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This Les Mis stirs the civil-unrest themes of Hugo’s original story into a Training Day-type scenario — and it works remarkably well.

Performance Worth Watching: Manenti so convincingly portrays a classic-case bully, we instantly loathe him.

Memorable Dialogue: “I am the law!”, Chris bellows, trying to assert his authority when he’s badly outnumbered — and he’s a hair’s breadth away from sounding like Eric Cartman demanding others to “Respect my authoritahh!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Ly keenly establishes incendiary drama within a powder-keg setting for a thoroughly engrossing, tense 105 minutes. He and co-scripters Giordano Gederlini and Alexis Manenti show a clear understanding of the racial and socioeconomic dynamics at play, no doubt stemming from Ly’s firsthand experience growing up in Montfermeil. The film’s immediacy is its strong point — if we initially feel tossed in the deep end, we soon find an analog in Stephane, who’s a good man forced to learn that the intricacies of this tangled urban ecosystem are not drawn in stark black-and-white.

Stephane is drawn as a modestly charismatic pillar of morality — which is to say, he’s more one-dimensional than Chris and Gwada, whose complexities emerge during a deftly rendered quiet stretch in the third act. (Chris is a thoroughly irritating presence, and it’s tough to spend time with him until we’re given a whiff of a suggestion that his cruelty and racism is something of a facade he constructs in order to maintain a semblance of control amidst such volatility. He’s still miles away from ever endearing himself to us, though.) This meditative sequence serves as calm before the storm, when tensions reach an inevitable boiling point, and Ly shows considerable skill and boldness as a filmmaker. It’s a uniformly strong effort from start to finish.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Comparing Ly’s Les Miserables to Portrait of a Lady on Fire is to measure the similarities and differences between, well, a film of bracing and contemporary rawness with a subtle and painterly love story. Which is to say, pitting them against each other is moronic. They’re both extraordinary films worthy of your time. Direct your disgruntlement at the Academy, which allows only one film submission per country for its international film category.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Les Miserables on Amazon Prime