Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Stronghold’ on Netflix, a Gritty French Thriller About Three Cops Working the Gray Areas of the Law

Netflix’s The Stronghold is a BOATS (Based On A True Story, of course) movie, sort of — it opens with a disclaimer that it’s inspired by facts, but characters and events are fictional. So I believe that means it’s “truthy,” using a 2012 police corruption scandal in Marseille to tell the story of three wholly fictional cop characters who were caught in the middle of it. I understand the necessity of a disclaimer used to assert the difference between ACTUAL REALITY and a movie that’s made with actors and a script and artificial lighting and wholly fictionally staged events. Gotta cover your butts, I guess. But it’s all moot if it’s a good story, well told, right? Right.

THE STRONGHOLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Greg Cera (Gilles Lellouche) is getting booked. As in, questioned and fingerprinted by the authorities. Subtitle: EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER. We see Greg driving an unmarked car with a siren slapped on top of it. Wait, is Greg a cop? Yes, he’s a cop. Whatever happens between now and eight months from now must have been/will be a doozy. He, Antoine (Francois Civil) and Yass (Karim Leklou) are on the BAC Nord force, a narcotics brigade on the north side of Marseilles. The job sucks. They fruitlessly chase a moped thief. They snag a pickpocket. They’re about to bust illegal turtle vendors (yes, illegal turtle vendors) when they get a call on the radio about a car thief. They chase him into the projects, which is like that scene in which Han Solo turns the corner and there’s like 100 stormtroopers waiting for him. That car will just have to be written off as stolen.

Those projects are a tinderbox, metaphorically speaking. Drug dealers run the place. They park outside the building, wearing masks and dealing dope. Greg, Antoine and Yass snatched one of the petty dealers — a “candy man,” as they call them — and hauled him in, and it just made things worse. They have an informant in there that could help put a dent in the drug trade, but their boss, Jerome (Cyril Lecomte), asks them to lay off the projects and meet their quota. In other words, stick with the turtle traffickers. So they’re frustrated.

They’re a little loose with their ethics, shaking down illicit cigarette vendors for a free carton, skimming a little weed for Antoine to smoke, stuff like that. They snatch a kid who smashes a car window, and after the boy curses them out from here to eternity, they slap the bubble on the roof and go for a high-speed joyride into oncoming traffic; the kid whoops and laughs. They’re not bad guys. Yass has a pregnant wife, Nora (Adele Exarchoplous), who’s also a cop; all four of them are finishing up dinner when her water breaks, so they load her in the car and slap the bubble on the roof.

Jerome calls Greg into his office. The projects. They’re making everyone look bad — the mayor, the cops, everything. A solid bust would make a nice news story. Greg and the guys would get a shot at some big fish for a change, and generate some good PR. Win-win, right? If only it were so simple. Antoine meets with his informant, Amel (Kenza Fortas), and shakes her down for a fat tip. She agrees, but they have to pay her five kilos of cannabis. Jerome signs off on it, but he won’t reach into the evidence locker for the five kilos. Figure it out, he says, so our guys start shaking down buyers as they leave the projects, fresh from a buy. It takes a while but they amass enough to get the ball rolling on this baby. Oh, by the way, don’t forget that opening scene, in which Greg the cop is the bookee instead of the booker.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’ve seen a bunch of French cop dramas on Netflix — Rogue City, Close Enemies, a few others — so mix them with Sheherazade, a gritty drama set in the Marseilles projects, and you roughly have The Stronghold.

Performance Worth Watching: Lellouche, Civil and Leklou show terrific chemistry playing three guys who are stuck in a car with each other all day, fighting like brothers and always having each other’s back.

Memorable Dialogue: “No lip or you’ll take a dip!” — the mantra Amel and Antoine share regarding their professional exchanges

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Stronghold is an immersive, gripping drama that’s much more than just the suspenseful, brilliantly staged action set piece that occurs smack-dab at the movie’s halfway point. It’s not necessarily a political film, although it’s hard not to notice racial disparity around the margins of the story, or the way the cloudy gray areas of the law allow people — whether they’re cops or crooks or some complex combination of the two — to manipulate the dynamics of power without any real oversight.

Significant pieces of the narrative are dedicated to character development. We hang out with Greg, Antoine and Yass, getting to know them, their personal and professional dynamic, and how they blur together. We see Yass with his young family, and those are easy scenes. More difficult are the wordless moments with Antoine, where we get a sense of who he is, and he’s not much more than a cop with a dog (and for once, a movie character who’s physically ripped is actually depicted in multiple scenes working out. Realism!). There’s a terrific scene in which Greg tells Yass that his baby boy is beautiful, and it’s subtle and quiet and only maybe a minute long, but it carries significant dramatic weight. So we understand and empathize with these characters as the film gets to that big action sequence — it’s a ripper — and then beyond, when these guys surely, inevitably, get cuffed. And The Stronghold isn’t at all about how and why they get cuffed, which is the mark of an excellent film.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Stronghold surpasses any expectations we may have for a gritty cop drama. It’s a pleasant surprise.

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 The Stronghold on Netflix