Benoît Magimel

The most chiselled jaws in French cinema face off in this glossy true-crime thriller about a two-fisted magistrate (Jean Dujardin) taking on a crime lord (Gilles Lellouche) and his drugs syndicate in mid-70s Marseilles. It’s basically The French Connection told from the home pitch, and the film can’t be faulted on design or on its classy casting, which calls on a top-rank contingent of grizzled scowlers. Having most fun is Benoît Magimel, rocking some mean mirror shades and his choicest De Niro mouth shapes. But it’s all a bit joyless and over-decorated, and the terrific Céline Sallette, from TV’s The Returned, has little to do but fret on the sidelines. You might go for this if you like Mesrine, or indeed any movies in which large men in well-cut suits snarl at each other, as in the Japanese gangster genre: it’s essentially a bouillabaisse yakuza movie.

A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.