Rent L.627 (1992)

Where's Maigret? - L.627 review by Steve

Influential crime-vérité which shows the futile struggle of Parisian narcotics officers against an incoming tide of drugs, and the further lawbreaking this provokes. If it seems drawn out at 145m, the many tv series it inspired are far longer. Didier Bezace plays the ordinary cop who is the hub of a colourful melange of informers.

His police squad is based in a caravan, indicative of the rapid spread of drug crime and the meagre resources against it. They are neither idiots nor academics. Although this is seminal, it avoids most future genre clichés: so there is no funeral for a hero, or corrupt/addicted officers, or moles... Or the cops as just another gang.

But there are some... such as the lonely wife. The story is episodic without a single narrative arc, because the war on drugs is ineffectual. Crime is too deeply embedded in the ordinary lives of the poor. Director and co-writer Bertrand Tavernier doesn't actually bother with the criminality of the rich, other than a few sardonic asides.

And there isn't much about the pushers, who are all immigrants, with their own ethnic divisions. This is all about the disorganised, traumatised law enforcement officers in a conflict which is already lost, and mostly destroys the destitute, uneducated users rather than the traffickers. The title? This is the number of French laws opposed to narcotics.