I feel like something might have been lost in translation when it came to this movie and me. I'm not French, and admittedly am not very knowledgeable about any real life cases this movie is surely based on, or at least inspired by. I went into this looking for a compelling cop/crime movie, and appreciated it for some of its visuals, performances, and its overall message. Because yes, the topics it deals with- crime, inequality, police brutality, systemic violence and cycles of oppression etc.- are all very important. The only problem is that I don't think the film is saying anything new or particularly eye opening. The Wire has dealt with this stuff amazingly well and in much greater detail, throughout many of its episodes. Most importantly, The Wire also managed to do all this while telling fascinating stories and giving us dozens of well developed, flawed, yet interesting and frequently sympathetic characters.
More than anything else, I think this is the biggest problem with Les misérables. The writing was weak to me. Like I said, it's well shot, the acting is all pretty good, the themes are relevant, and its message an important and more than agreeable one. But I just felt it did so little to involve me as a viewer. If you compare this to something like City Of God, which has a fantastic, relentless sense of pacing and a high number of hugely emotional scenes, this movie just falls apart. The main incident that gets the plot going takes too long to happen, and then doesn't really cause the plot to build or progress. The story then comes in fits and bursts. Some scenes feel like they go on forever. The characters are incredibly one-dimensional, and none really change or grow throughout the film. The dialogue is fairly basic, and there's little in the way of humour, sadness, or tension. There feels like there's about three different endings before a more exciting climax suddenly appears... only for it to be cut short by a hugely pretentious and eye-rollingly sudden ending. Like, I get what they were saying by ending it the way they did. But it felt so cheap and unearned, especially because it had already felt like the movie had ended multiple times before that. It's barely over 100 minutes in total, but it felt more like two and a half hours.
Oh also, more of a nitpick- and certainly not a problem for those who speak French- but the subtitles weren't very well done in my opinion. They weren't bold enough, and so often when the white lettering appeared on a white or mostly white background, I couldn't read them too well. Giving them a black outline, making them bolder, or putting them on the black border at the bottom of the screen (which happens given this film is shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio) could have solved this.
I think there was potential here for a more compelling movie, and if you're more after a film with a powerful message that reflects and touches upon current issues, this could be worth a watch. It'll likely start conversations, and open eyes, and maybe that's enough. I just thought it largely failed as a story; as an actual film. It highlights the importance of pacing and well-developed characters more than anything else, because everything else was done quite well. It fell apart with the writing for me, but I know I'm in an extreme minority here, so if this looks interesting to you, please don't let the ignorant, random non-French guy on the Internet put you off this too badly. I just had some thoughts I had to get out I suppose, and overall, it's far from terrible, even with what I perceived to be a fairly weak screenplay.
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