So much average

Please don't spend money on this.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Finishing the last ep of the very good Sci-Fi Noir series Fortitude,I got set to catch up on movie viewings. Taking a look at titles about to leave Netflix UK,I was surprised to see a "serious" movie starring The Artist actor Jean Dujardin,which led to me making the connection.The plot-1970s Marseille:Calling themselves "La French" the gang led by Gaètan Tany Zampa becomes a major exporter of heroin into New York,which leads to US police going after the French Connection. Transferred to an organised crime unit, Former Juvenile Court judge Pierre Michel finds the gang to be running rings round the department. Getting info of the gang from a teen addict,Michel sets his sights on cutting the "octopus' arms" of Zampa,and discovers that this octopus will not lets its connections be cut easily,when the informant teen is found murdered.View on the film:Following the other side of the investigation not shown in The French Connection,co-writer/(with Audrey Diwan) director Cédric Jimenez & cinematographer Laurent Tangy get into the spirit of things with the Gaumont 70's logo being used,and followed with sharp-suits,smoke- filled police stations, changing surveillance tech,neon disco lights and short,blunt shots of violence. Untangling each La French octopus arm, Jimenez stylishly uses hand-held (but not shaky cam) camera moves to give the title a gritty,Noir documentary appearance,as Jimenez keeps up with the cops finding hideouts in the rugged countryside.Pushing his fellow cops to get results,the screenplay by Jimenez and Diwan tensely place all the pressure on Noir rebel Michel,which sets the fuse for abrupt exchanges with Michel and his family,as he becomes consumed with breaking the French Connection. Initially outsmarting the police at every turn,the writers give Zampa a delicious smugness,which melts away as Zampa's ice cool confidence turns to doubt. "Ripped from the headlines" the writers give the across the years' war between Michel and Zampa a superb urgency,where each setback sends the other one off the rails.Not being in the mood to take Uggie (RIP) for walkies, Jean Dujardin gives a fantastic performance as Michel,whose Noir obsession to capture Zampa crackles with a simmering thirst for justice from Dujardin. Dancing without a care in the world in his discos, Gilles Lellouche gives an excellent performance as Zampa,whose calm shell Lellouche chips away to reveal a sharp viciousness,as the connection is made.

In the many reviews and description of the movie, it is mentioned that Pierre Michel is a detective. That is wrong. Pierre Michel was a judge, which is very different from a detective. Was Pierre Michel doing a detective work? Well it could be considered as yes, but his main work position was being a judge.

Another great policier from La Belle France where they continue to make films about PEOPLE and seemingly never heard of cgi, streets named Elm or Men in black. The two leads are both more or less playing against type; Dujardin starred in two COMICAL crime capers as an inept James Bond figure, Lellouche is more often on the receiving end of violence than generating it and they co-starred memorably in a comedy a couple of years back. Here, Dujardin in Eliot Ness mode fronts a unit to bring down not a beer but a drugs trafficker (Lellouche) and like Ness has a serious family life going for him. Aptly for a movie set in Marseilles one of the supporting players is Gerard Meylan, a regular member in Robert Guideguin's repertory company and like the entire cast he is more than up to snuff. There well may be those who will groan not ANOTHER Gallic gangster film and that of course is their right and they can't touch you for it but the rest of us will, I suspect, wallow in yet another great policier.

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.