The Connection Review

Inspired by the same true-life events that informed William Friedkin’s New York-based The French Connection, Cédric Jimenez lays out the Marseilles end of the battle against the heroin trade of the mid-’70s. Though his style is more glossy than Friedkin’s, he halves the screentime between Jean Dujardin’s maverick magistrate and Gilles Lellouche’s ruthless-but-loves-his-family Mob boss. It’s more like Heat, only with more smoking and bigger sideburns. Still, for all the charisma of its hero and villain, it falls down on its failure to resist cliché.