Les Misérables (2019)
Directed by Ladj Ly
Stéphane has recently joined the Anti-Crime Squad in Montfermeil, in the suburbs of Paris, France, where Victor Hugo set his famed novel “Les Miserables”. Alongside his new colleagues Chris and Gwada – both experienced members of the team – he quickly discovers tensions running high between local gangs. When the trio finds themselves overrun during the course of an arrest, a drone captures the encounter, threatening to expose the reality of everyday life.
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5 films that influenced Les Misérables
What critics say influenced Les Misérables
However, its more derivative elements, borrowed from films like Training Day, End of Watch and Do The Right Thing , make it fall well short of becoming this generation’s answer to Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 masterpiece.
Critics have been quick to compare the film to Do the Right Thing, but Spike Lee’s classic never made the cops into anything more than supporting characters, an omnipresent, ever-observant presence on the periphery of a tense existence.
A cross between The Wire, Do the Right Thing and Training Day, Les Misérables is brilliantly paced, unbearably tense and a reminder that there are so many great actors who go under the radar.
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
“Les Miserables,” in which the SCU’s tactics come to a head with the impoverished community evokes “Training Day” or “Do the Right Thing” as much as it does Hugo.
Nominated for best international feature at the 92nd Oscars (it lost out to Parasite ), it presents a powder-keg portrait of broiling tensions, recalling both the pressure-cooker structure of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and even-handed vérité grit of David Simon’s monumental TV series The Wire.
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.
Truth be told, Ly’s tale of poverty, race and police abuse of power feels more akin to Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day than anything else.
A cross between The Wire, Do the Right Thing and Training Day, Les Misérables is brilliantly paced, unbearably tense and a reminder that there are so many great actors who go under the radar.
Even if the framing device around which much of the plot depends upon recalls more standard action-thriller fair like Training Day (or even Dennis Hopper’s 1988 drama Colors of all things), the initial immersion into the daily ins and outs in Montfermeil is superb.
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
It is a potboiler thriller that has ingredients of the likes of Training Day as it goes about lifting the lid on the live wire tension that exists between the police and organised crime in the Parisian suburbs.
Ly’s chronicle of disenfranchised youth through the prism of the banlieu landscape will surely bring to mind La Haine .
Unlike the film’s natural cinematic predecessor, “La Haine,” whose rap theme song advocates a much harsher approach toward the authorities, “Les Misérables” seems inclined to blame the system, not the pawns.
Not that Ly is as successful as Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund were with City of God or, keeping things a bit more in the same region, as Mathieu Kassovitz was with his minimalistic 1995 marvel La Haine .
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
Rialto Distribution Les Miserables has drawn comparisons to Training Day, The Wire and La Haine.
Ly isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve here, with elements of “Training Day” and “La Haine” bumping up against memories of “Clockers” and “The Wire.” “Do the Right Thing” also looms large over the proceedings, with racial tensions in the neighborhood on the verge of boiling over on a day when it’s too damn hot outside for any of this nonsense.
This Les Misérables is inspired by the novel and musical only in its themes, not its plot.
There are echoes of the themes Victor Hugo explored in his 1862 novel in Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” but anyone seeking a straightforward adaptation will have to look elsewhere.
Instead the title refers to embattled Parisian banlieue (district) Les Bosquets where the film is set and where Victor Hugo located important scenes in his famous 1862 novel "Les Misérables."
Not a remake, this 2019 Les Misérables is set in the community where Victor Hugo first penned his masterpiece, the themes of his timeless story are present, but virtually unrelated otherwise.
Meanwhile, in the projects of Montfermeil (the film’s title refers to the town’s name, the place where Victor Hugo wrote his novel Les Misérables ) lives a populace under the totalitarian rule of these same police.
The Paris streets are full of joy during the opening moments of Ladj Ly’s electrifying “Les Misérables,” which despite the deceptive title is not yet another adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, but rather an urgently contemporary cop thriller riffing on the tale’s timeless themes.
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“Les Misérables” is a mosaic of characters, also reminding one of Paul Haggis’ “Crash.”