User reviews

In Paris the fragile peace between gangs and police is threatened when a lion cub from the circus goes astray. Depicting the harsh and violent culture of the authorities and those the authorities universally neglect and forget (the world over): you reap what you sow and cultivate, if it has sharp fangs it will bite you where it hurts the most.

I walked into the theater to see Les Miserables late this afternoon with no expectations.

Maybe a thought that this was a modern 'woke' version of Hugo's classic. It isn't. It's a gritty, fast paced, police procedural set in the banlieues of Paris. Unflinching about what the police find there, and how the police act and react to a Paris that tourists never see.

Sobering and revolutionary.

A stunning find and a great movie.

Les Miserables - 2020 French crime drama on Netflix. I've not seen the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel but I reckon you couldn't get two films further apart. 3 policemen - two of whom have been brought up in the tough Parisian neighbourhoods in which they patrol. The other, a rookie fresh from leafy Cherbourg definitely has not. Rookie does not like the rough tactics of his two colleagues. And neither do we. But he - and we - soon come to learn that it isn't as clear cut as we think. The softly softly approach may not stand the test of time. This is a bleak film about a bleak world. And it's absolutely right that there's no easy answers. There is no sugar coating. And maybe rookie is just naive. And maybe we are too. My kind of film. A thought provoking 8 out of ten.

Profoundly moving, hard hitting moral drama elevated beyond being yet another 'banlieu' film through masterful use of cinematic language, combined with heartfelt performances from a largely non professional cast. France's ongoing tensions around identity, race and belonging expand, confronting you head on with dilemmas about the sheer difficulty of the human condition.

Looking for something going further than social realism? Comfortable being uncomfortable? Willing to question the assumptions of multiculturalism and the liberal enlightenment project? Prepared to wrestle with the effort of formulating just what questions need asking instead of expecting someone to bring you answers? Les Miserables will be for you.

Opening with shots of young black teenagers celebrating France's world cup victory celebrations in Paris in 2018, concluding this opening scene with a shot of the Arc de Triomphe superimposing the title Les Miserables, director Ladj Ly at once situates himself in a canon of French 'auteurs' while claiming space for these marginalised and excluded kids as being indeed French and, furthermore, spiritual descendants of the 19th century 'Les Miserables' of Victor Hugo's novel.

Montfermeil cite (housing project / estate), on the Eastern outskirts of Paris. Following the world cup, three policemen, Chris, Gwada and newcomer to the team Stephane, are looking for a thief who's stolen a lion cub from a travelling circus - they have a limited amount of time - if the cub isn't returned, war will erupt between the various patriarchal groups who live uneasily alongside one another in the cite.

The liberal enlightenment project assumes the inevitability of 'progress' - it's only a matter of time before everyone, everywhere in the world, adopts European (French) systems of democracy, liberal capitalism and so on. Human beings are rational and reasonable, living peacefully through democracy, state institutions and the rule of law.

The 'panopticon' is a system of total surveillance which emerged from 18th century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. This can be seen to manifest in housing estates like Montfermeil - uniform, system built apartment blocks facilitating observation and control. However, the surveillance is subverted by the nerdy boy Buzz (played by the director's son, Al Hassan Ly) whose hobby is flying drones and who, through the drone, witnesses and records an act of police brutality.

Spectacular use is made of the cite with drone shots soaring above the apartment buildings. Implying freedom, escape yet there's something more sinister. Early on the viewer is implicated in Buzz's pubescent voyeurism using his drone to spy on women - we see from his point of view, implicating us in his voyeurism which confronts us with how so often people in these places are used by politicians and the mainstream media as objects to be exploited for entertainment or political purposes. What's our purpose in watching this? How many times have we watched prurient documentaries about 'tough gangs' or 'problem estates?' While 'District 13' or 'La Haine' spring to mind as obvious comparisons, Les Miserables shares some characteristics, including one crucial scene in particular, with Francois Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows'. Both films show marginalised, excluded children. The same difficult age, 12 / 13, moving away from childhood into adolescence.

An academic called Anne Gillain wrote an essay about 'The 400 Blows' called 'The Script of delinquency' drawing on psychoanalytic theories from DW Winnicott and Melanie Klein. Returning to Gillain's work helps account for why and how Les Miserables is so much more than just another 'banlieu'/ social realist film.

Issa's mother in Les Miserables appears, like Mme Doinel, in 400 Blows, uninterested in her son. If I understood the dialogue correctly, when the cops call at the flat, she doesn't know where he is. Instead, she shows Gwada a room full of female friends counting out money. Clearly materialism and money are more important than children.

Stealing is central in both films - Gillain draws on psychotherapists Winnicott and reads stealing as being 'a gesture of hope' on the part of the child to reclaim the care and love to which they are entitled. Lead actor Issa Perica is perfectly cast as Issa - cub like himself with his delicate features, complexion, beige combat pants, sporting a T shirt with a lion motif explicitly identifying him with the animal. This however is an animal destined for a life of imprisonment as a circus animal. By stealing the cub Issa at one and the same time reclaims the nurturing to which he's entitled and by liberating the animal expresses his own yearning for freedom beyond the confines of his current life.

If women have little visibility in Les Miserables I read this as a comment by Ly on the macho posturing of the patriarchal society he reflects. Women, when they do appear, are strong figures. Teenage girls answer back when provoked by the cop Chris, an inadequate little bully of a man. An enraged mother intervenes against the cops' abusive questioning of four small boys.

If the state has abandoned these kids, literally excluding them and their families to the peripheries, other organisations or institutions don't offer much in the way of alternatives. There's the fast food restaurants and a fast food stand whose owner turns the kids away when they ask for food - the nurturing they seek, embodied by food, is denied them. Promises of reward and fulfilment through work unfulfilled for those too young to participate in economic activity.

Another form of imprisonment is implied through conformity to religion. During a scene when the boys are invited to the mosque, the camera is close in to the Imam and his co worshippers, wearing Islamic dress and beards. One of the boys yawns. Religion, with it's imperatives of dress, conformity of appearance, closes down possibility. By contrast, when they're left to their own devices - playing basketball, making slides from discarded car doors or goofing around in a paddling pool with water pistols, freedom expresses itself through camera work which opens out to long, expansive shots. Envisaged by the state as ordered, regimented public housing the cite becomes instead a locus of spontaneity - space around the blocks is reclaimed as somewhere to play. A similar binary operates in The 400 Blows with interior shots (carceral space) contrasted with exterior - the city as a place of exciting potentialities.

In Les Miserables carceral (prison) space manifests through cars. Patrolling the cite the three cops are confined to their car, unable to leave it for fear of attack. Ultimately, the custodians are metaphorical prisoners themselves, in contrast to the kids, who occupy the space of the cite. There seems little to distinguish the cops from criminals. At one stage, Chris negotiates a favour with the criminal owner of a sheesha lounge. Where's the moral compass? The police here, as representatives of the state, behave in ways which are anything but reasonable and rational. Their lack of integrity shown by their appalling mistreatment of the children they're supposed to protect.

Finally, staircases and trash feature prominently in both les Miserables and The 400 Blows, although as different signifiers. At one point Stephane is at the foot of the stairs of an apartment block, in the foyer, calling for reinforcements, unable to give his position. There's no address on the building, this is nowhere and everywhere. Montfermeil stands for every marginalised, excluded community, indeed estates like this are to be found on the fringes of every French town and city, populated in the main by those considered 'not enough French.'

I'm saying no more. Hopefully after reading this you'll be off to watch les Miserables as it should be seen - on the big screen. Enjoy.

Some people acknowledge that this movie is well shot, but complain that it doesn't get the roots of the problem, doesn't point out the culprits, probably the capitalist society and France's colonial past. Neither does it offer much in the way of easy solutions, which would have been completely off the mark. Any of that would have led to a militant movie that would have satisfied a few militants but that would have had much less impact on the rest of the viewers.

People compare this movie to La Haine, which was a landmark in its time; but Les Miserables takes a much wider view, where each participant - even the shadiest - has his own logic (few women in this movie, btw) and reasons for doing what they are doing. It is this humanist outlook that tags it to Victor Hugo, rather than the story that has little to do with the novel of the same name.

The suspense is riveting to the end, all the more that we don't know exactly where the movie is going. There are loads of short appearances by little-known actors that leave you wondering whether they are are actually acting a part or playing their own role. The action scenes are realistic and original.

The movie is very good but left me a bit unsatisfied. It is well shot with good acting from all the actors. But it seems like the story was mixed with La Haine, Banlieue 13 Ultimatum and City of God. The bad cop/good cop story line along with the outsider point of view of one of the policemen felt cliché (as some parts of the dialogue). It has a good message and I could clearly see the intentions of the director in making this movie. But, as someone familiar with French cinema that shows Paris suburbs, police brutality and racism in France in general, I haven't seen anything new here. And I know there's still a lot in those issues that hasn't been shown in movies yet. As this movie is nominated for an oscar I was expecting something more.

An intense and powerful drama that shows the raw reality of life in French inner cities. At times breathtaking, LES MISÉRABLES is doubtlessy the strongest banlieue film since LA HAINE. Ly's debut feature is more than impressive.

Les Miserables is a very well crafted movie, with excellent photography and acting, able to keep the narrative tension at good levels all along the story, with a very dramatic ending. The reason why I left the theatre with somewhat mixed feelings is that, if the movie had the ambition to elevate itself above the pure police procedural and to offer a point of view on an extremely delicate theme like the inflammatory social, racial and religious tensions of the Paris banlieue, well on this level the movie does not deliver. Les Miserables shows more than interprets, it engages the spectator without going under the surface of the issue. The post credit quote from Victo Hugo ("Remember this, my friends: there are not bad grass or bad men, just bad growers") just reinforced my doubts, as the movie focussed on the bad grass and not at all on the issue of "bad growers".

Does one have to be hardcore all the time? A cop that is in the streets of Paris. I am not pretending to know what it is like ... walking that thin line between being respectful but having others treat you with respect too. Especially when it comes to the criminal element on the streets.

But this is where this excels. While we concentrate on the cops mostly, we do get to see the world from every perspective there is. I think people compare it to La Haine, which might be fine, but I was thinking more of The Wire. The latter being American and tv show, but still ... the vibe of showing multiple sides ... and the humanity of both sides is strong in this one.

And when I say humanity ... we mostly see people not being able to actually communicate ... and therefor being stuck. Stuck in a circle of hate, frustration and violence. Something that the director is really capable of showing us. We dive into the whole thing and it is tough to know who to root for ... or rather and that is the tricky part: against! Because you see the police doing shady things, you won't really like them being ... mean to ordinary people.

There is an inciting incident ... well one that will change the world for all involved. And unfortunately that does not seem to be uncommon ... violence begets violence. And it is tough to impossible to break out of it ... but where will it lead? And how can it conclude? Is there hope? And what sacrifice would it take? What would it cost? To the dignity and the soul of those involved ... there is so much here, because it goes beyond the surface.

I stumbled across this by accident, but am more than happy that I did. And I had no idea what this would be about ... I actually thought it was going to be a documentary ... and it sort of begins like one too. But it does change lanes/gears and pace quite fast ... and goes on to tell a story that is one of the most gripping and intense ones I have seen this year ... not easy to watch at all mind you ... still worth every minute of it.

My Review- Les Misérables 2019 (Not the Musical) My Rating 7/10 This very thought provoking French movie was nominated as Best International Feature Film at last year's Academy Award Ceremony. The amazing South Korean film Parasite of course won that category as well as Best Picture for 2020 becoming the first Foreign Language movie to win both awards. I don't know the excellent Actors or the Director of this contemporary film set in the working-class suburb of Montfermeil, where Victor Hugo wrote his famous novel Les Misérables. I would have scored it higher if I had found the conclusion more satisfying but sometimes in Foreign language movies a little is lost in translation and I found the conclusion a little abrupt. We are propelled into the future from the community unrest poverty and corruption in authority from those troubled times of early 19th Century Paris that Victor Hugo wrote about in 1862 to the 2nd decade of the 21st Century that mirror exactly the equally troubled times in Paris and the world in general today . The community of Montfermeil where the film takes place was the location of real life police violence which took place in the city on 14 October 2008 in the aftermath of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and was observed and filmed by Ladj Ly who co wrote and directed this story that follows several characters within the commune, as a theft from a teenager spirals into the threat of a large crisis. The film depicts abuses against poor citizens, especially teenagers of sub-Saharan African or Maghrebi ethnicities, and the consequences of a few bad apples who are responsible or supposed to be responsible to maintain law and order. Assigned to work alongside unethical police veterans Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga) in Paris' Anti-Crime Brigade, Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) - a recent transfer to the working-class suburb of Montfermeil, where Victor Hugo wrote his famous novel Les Misérables - struggles to establish a working relationship with influential community leaders while attempting to maintain some semblance of peace between his disreputable team and the citizens of the local housing projects. When what should be a simple arrest goes tragically awry, the three officers must individually reconcile with the aftermath of their actions while angling to keep the neighbourhood from retaliating with mob violence. Beginning as a Cesar-winning short film, the film was inspired by the 2005 riots in Paris. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize (in a tie with BACURAU) and was selected as France's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. Les Misérables 2019 deserves all the International praise and awards it has received . The very exciting and disturbing mob siege scenes between the community and the Police at the end of the film are staged and shot so convincingly that it looks as though it's taken from actual news reel footage. I just would have preferred not to be left wondering what happened to the main characters ?

Just in case there was any confusion, this Les Misérables has no singing Russell Crowe's or period costumes but is a film that shares the same power and humanity as Victor Hugo's famed novel that has spawned countless stage and screen adaptations.

Nominated at this years Academy Awards in the best Foreign Language film category and announcing the arrival of a very special directional talent in the form of Ladj Ly in the process, Les Misérables is an incendiary and white knuckle thriller that is set in the director's childhood neighborhood of Montfermeil in Paris, a melting pot of different cultures and beliefs that are waiting to explode around a small team of specialist police officers who patrol these streets in hopes of maintaining order.

Based off his own short film of the same name and starring its three lead actors Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djebril Zonga, this version of Ladj Ly's Les Misérables rarely lets up for a single minute as we follow Bonnard's new to the team Ruiz whose been partnered up with Manenti and Zonga's veteran officers who know the streets they roam like the back of their hands and whose fragile state of minds and humanity comes to the forefront around a seriously dangerous situation that starts around, of all things, a small lion cub.

Filmed in a virtuoso manner that places the viewer right in the thick of the action as we are introduced to these mean streets where the working class, the youth and the criminally minded clash on a daily basis, Les Misérables is an electrifying watch as it ramps up to near unbearable levels of tension as the films various characters converge in unpredictable and confronting ways.

Wonderfully played by its main cast that includes a hugely impressive performance from young actor Issa Perica as the tales important figure Issa, Les Misérables puts many Hollywood police dramas/thrillers to shame as it bounces around the locales of Montfermeil and establishes all of its key players with grounded backgrounds and motivations, building a world and story that feels cut from real life, a tale that comes from the heart and experience of a lived in life bought forward in a stunning manner through film.

Final Say -

Not the Les Misérables many know and love but one that will hopefully find an audience just the same, Ladj Ly's stunning feature debut is one of the finest police thrillers of the last decade and an insightful look at modern day Paris also. An absolute must-watch.

4 1/2 kebab shops out of 5

I give it a 5 for its technical slickness but the plot and the cliches already mentioned here and there are unbearable. This is a story about a community or a mix of communities whose social integration in their host country is a complete failure. Those who succeeded and they are many, would not get into this simplistic finger pointing. With his film, Ladj Ly has become a flagbearer of this victimization most of the French can hardly accept given the level of wealth redistribution in this country (the highest in the world). Yes these communities live in a Ghetto but - and it might come as a surprise - this ghetto is dripping in taxpayers money. Make no mistake this is not an "out of the grid" sort of hood. They have schools, hospitals and public transports (you see the kids taking the train to Paris in the first scene). Long story short, this is a biaised take on life in Montfermeil where Victor Hugo had quite a different experience.

The first film on police brutality that I felt didn't demonize any of the parties.

I felt every character was likeable and you can really see how good intentions can go really bad.

Very well done. The first movie about diversity and the projects that didn't make me go mad with how inconsistent or immature the arguments were.

You feel the troubles of Issa and how the police get panicked. Wonderfully crafted.

This movie deserves a round of applause for tackling such a big issue as the misery and social and ethnical diversity in the treacherous suburbs of France with neutrality, intensity and emotions. The fact Ladj Ly (the director) does that with a refine style and a cautious but reasonable neutrality makes this film even greater.

This film is a shock, a love at first sight and the well deserved heir of the masterpiece La Haine shot in 1995.

It may lack a bit of laughters, a bit of moral to the story, but it's a great great discovery.

The story focuses on Stéphane, a cop who recently joined an anti-crime brigade of a town next to Paris called Montfermeil. Stephane quickly discovers the tensions between the different ethnical and social groups of the neighbourhood . He also discovers the curious methods of his team mates that he disapproves in the first place. During an arrest, one of them gets overwhelmed by the events and made a terrible blunder but a drone has filmed all the scene - they must find that drone at all cost.

Beyond the police blunder, it's a denonciation of several misconducts in those areas and the complete state of neglect that all inhabitants suffer from that is tackled in this film.

The movie is in fact a real whistle blower of a latent conflict. A bit of a bolt out of the blue. In short: a warning cry.

Don't get it wrong. The film does not call for civil war. It's just a depiction of what happens every day in some cities of France.

The Victor Hugo's reference is just a wink, a little tribute as Monfermeil (the city where the story takes place) is also where the Thenardier family in Les Misérables (the book) lives. The movie is more about what the word "Les Misérables"' means than about the story of the book. The film focuses on the miserable people living , working, growing in Montfermeil, their interractions and conflicts in those abandoned lands of the French republic. The director wanted to send a message to the authorities and make them realize what are the feelings of the people living there who had been left in the lurch after so many political promises and this for so many years.

The fact that the director tackles this issue through the policemen' eyes is daring and intelligent since we quickly realize that the policemen are part of these miserable people.

Right after the blunder, starts on a vicious circle which leads to the final phrase of Victor Hugo himself: there is no bad seeds, or bad men but just bad growers.

In terms of rythm, intensity and style the film is a great success . You never lose the tension, you never want to take sides but you want to know where and how it will end up even if you presume it will end up badly. The amateur actors and profesional actors are all of them very genuine especially the bad and the good cop.. I highly recommend it. It's a great film and a fantastic suprise in the French film panorama.

"Those who live are those who fight." Victor Hugo

Because I have had my fill of violence recently in the realism of For Sama and the fantasy of The Gentlemen, I can more easily recognize the artistic importance of it to represent the malign tendencies of human nature and the absurdity of having to defend life with terror rather than thought. The rugged streets of ethnically-diverse Paris, usually hidden from us white travelers, come alive in this loose update of Les miserables by director Ladj Li's

Violence is cinematic, and in the Oscar-nominated Les miserables, set in Hugo's modern-Paris hood, it serves to explode in our minds the great divide between kids and adults and the evil of police brutality for those kids doomed to spend their days under racist dominance and ignorant supervision. The

Young Issa (Issa Perica) steals a baby lion from a circus; an active crime unit, led by modern-Javert Chris (writer Alexis Mananti), pursues him with brutal results. As white police clash with predominantly Muslim citizens, kids ironically become the antagonists, as if writer/director Li wanted to remind us that in Lord-of-the-Flies tradition, even the innocent are not so innocent if we teach them well. Hugo would have agreed that the adults in charge are jailers with cruelty on their minds.

The cinematographic movement of this Oscar-nominated drama is active with Steadicam balance and drone perspective. We are there.

Of the dozen or so characters, not one is neglected, and not one is irrelevant to the plot. As for the Parisian setting, Ladj makes sure the Eifel Tower appears in a few shots, more I suspect to make fun of our cliched experience with the great city because the hood we see in Les miserables is the world we most likely would never see in our travels. Chalk up another of cinema's gifts to us.

Here's a film of enormous humanity and entertainment couched in a tense world of racist clashes and violent conclusions. Hugo would agree while offering a modicum of hope: "The darkest night will end, and the sun will rise."

It does not tell us anything new. La Haine is very similar but way better, as it was the first movie and is original so to say.

Technically Les misérables is great. Actors are "believable" and also great. Les misérables misses unique things/story, to make it outstanding.

Nearly the whole message from film, can be reduced to the fantastic music video from Justice - Stress. Google it, watch it and tell me i am wrong. It is like "who sows the wind will reap storm".

The film touches subjects which although very important, remain out of focus in almost all contemporary narratives. As the title «Les miserables» indicates, the protagonists are the victims of a system which breeds inequality and marginalization of a large proportion of the population. The story develops linearly, the scenes stay within the essential statements, spectacularly false impressions are omitted and the message comes through effectively. My feeling was that there was really no plot but an ordinary, documentary like, day to day happening in one of the ghettos of civilized Paris in France. What I found very interesting and revealing was the depiction of the inability of western societies to assimilate, integrate and absorb different cultures. I was left wondering.

As a former French resident I was pleased with how this film actually gives the audience the look and feel of life in France and it's cultural divide. Most of France's youth are not ethnically French but of Maghrébine & Subsaharienne decent. The beginning of the film shows France's unity in victory but life immediately goes back to normal. I would rate it higher if it wasn't for the "what do you think happened ending".

Why those rebels are throwing shopping carts and stuff down the stairway? Do I as audience have to invent another reason for the actions rather than guess that the people might express their anger that is a result of living in the hoods. And not have enough money or something. Action was the whole point of the movie but it failed to have a unique idea and the reason for the film to exists. Otherwise a good and watchable movie.

Les Miserables (2019) is a well acted, loose, updated version of Victor Hugo's classic novel. Damien Bonnard plays a sympathetic police officer, assigned to a new team, policing an intercity town in France. He is met with difficulties from the people, as well as from his fellow officers, however he is able to hold it together. I would recommend this film to anyone that enjoys good cinema.

But it could be further elevated from simply demo what's happening right now in the suburbs of Paris, it actually could try to provide some solutions or initiatives

This is a vivid depiction of a terrible "bainlieu"--a ghetto located in a Paris suburb. It's filled with poor immigrants, random criminals, juvenile delinquents, aimless kids, and all sorts of riff raff whose behavior ranges from viciousness to general mischief. With ineffective or no parenting or schooling, it's just chaos. There are fundemenalist Muslim preachers (some former convicts) and local gang leaders trying to impose their version of order. Into this add three cops--one a macho idiot, one well-meaning but weak, and one who is genuinely decent. The film does a pretty good job of showing how an abusive cop behaves, and it also captures the unreasonableness of the mobs of lawless teenagers who make life impossible.

Where it ultimately fails is creating the implication that these things are somehow morally equivalent or that the corruption of a rogue cop is a significant part of the reason for this chaotic, dysfunctional ghetto. Bad cops may thrive in an environment like this, but ghettos are not created by police. A fair depiction would emphasize other problems, many in the home, and a few good and bad cops would be minor factors. But movie makers can't resist humanizing criminals and demonizing cops, and the result is a 50/50 mix that is basically nonsense. I found the film incomplete and, in essence, an empty platitude.