THE CONNECTION is a gritty slice of French crime which, as the title would suggest, is based on much the same story as the famous FRENCH CONNECTION by William Friedkin. The story follows a dedicated judge who makes it his business to bring down a heroin kingpin, played by the excellent Giles Lellouche, an actor I better known playing the hero in the likes of POINT BLANK and MEA CULPA. This is a downbeat film full of sudden bursts of violence and a very fast pace so that you never get bored by the familiarity of the genre ingredients. It's also gritty and realistic, and has a good balance between character relationships, plot, and breakneck thrills. It might not be the most original film out there, but it's a film which achieves what it seeks to do, and it's a solid, engaging achievement.

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.

This story, inspired by actual events that occurred in Marseilles, has already been told in the early eighties: LE JUGE, starring Jacques Perrin, as the lead character. Well, this one is more ambitious, starring Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lelouche and Benoit Magimel as a supporting character. Those three are great figures of the new french crime movie industry. This tale takes place in Marseilles, South of France, during the mid seventies, and describes the dog fight, the terrific struggle between a hard boiled, ruthless, untouchable judge against a no less ambitious, greedy, smart and fierce drug ring leader. Jean Dujardin plays the judge and Gilles Lelouche his Némésis. The sequence between the two of them is outstanding, although it never occurred in real life. Curiously, in this movie, audiences may feel empathy for the judge but for the gangster as well. No real hero or true villain here. And I loved another gripping scene, the one with Dujardin in a phone booth, begging his wife - the beautiful Celine Salette - to come back to him. This scene was improvised by Dujardin.