To start of with, this film no fun ride, nothing glossy or Hollywood like happy endings bull.. It's hard as nails, nihilistic and pretty gutwrenching. It also comes over as very realistic. The director also had a big hand in the (later) great French cop-series "Braquo" which is also excellent and very tough, and this has the same style.Sure, it may lack story, I would say it's almost like watching a documentary: a day in the life of... But the happenings that unfold are told with so much vigour and relentlessness (is that a word?) that they kept me glued to the screen the whole 107 min.Always on the lookout for anything this raw and another reviewer compared it with another French jewel "Dobermann" which as you will understand I absolutely adore as well. But the two are not at all comparable. They are in fact worlds apart with "Dobermann" being a comic-book like eurotrash/punk action adventure and this a slick slice of painful underworld realism.Absolutely stunning 9/10

I'm really tough on realism, good scripting, dialogs and screenplay when it gets to appreciate a movie. In this case, Schoendorffer made one of the most realistic and even scaring movie of the french criminal society. Nothing is left aside to stigmatize what happens on the dark side of the french society. Ruthless mobsters fighting silently for their share of drug business, prostitutes, theft and a lifestyle that consists in consuming life by both ends. I must actually admit that this movie is in total opposition with anything I've seen in recent years, in particular American crime thrillers that are often quite stereotyped. This one is so realistic, so close to real life that it is scaring. The trafficking that goes on here is the one you read about in the newspapers and the actors play so convincingly that you feel like a silent witness of a mobsters' daily life. It's not a movie for kids clearly and Schoendorffer spares the viewer nothing of the terrible violence of this underground world. This movie is among the top 10 I've seen in my life and I guess it will stay there. I can only recommend it warmly to anyone interested in seeing a real good crime thriller. Of course, if you're french and live in the southern Paris suburbs, you'll recognize lots of places in this movie and will even feel more involved with the screenplay.Definitely a must.

Bad acting (philippe Caubere acts like Michel Constantin on a bad day...), cheap violence and torture (did they really need to glorify the act of drilling a hole through a kneecap, are we supposed to enjoy this?), no plot - just mean bad guys (if this was part of providing young audiences with role models I believe the director should be sued, these models are not going to give any good ideas to youngsters... ).There are much better contemporary French films around, this was just a pathetic "kill bill" try à la française, and even so, it misses the point.If you want good french stuff with suspense, violence, tough guys and a fine plot, look for "MR 73" or "36 quai des orfèvres"

I just don't understand... Where is the story, where are the characters ? Well, this is a strange movie. I'm still wondering whether is was good or not... This could have been a classic but the characters are so flat: They all live for the same things (i.e. drugs, alcohol, money and Hungarian whores) they get doing some "business". None of the characters seems to have something unique or original. The story is really completing this. Whith no-personality-characters you get a no-personality-story or just a no-thing. On the other hand if you really haven't got anything to do today. Just go. There is a lot of dumb mafia guys shootin' and drinking all film long. Really interesting ;-) Fortunately I didn't pay for the cinema so I can't regret it !