With its gritty, street-level feel and warts-and-all, anti-heroic cop characters, there are obvious comparisons between Bob Swaim's film and The French Connection. But while celebrated at the time for its realism, this sporadically violent tale of a Parisian plain-clothes unit's exploitation of a pair of informers doesn't pass the test of time as well as Friedkin's movie, trapped somewhat by its very early-'80s stylistics.
WHat do hold up well are the performances. Shot in the - now typical, but then not so - verite style, Leotard and Baye are believable as the pair caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and the cops - coming across like a particularly rotten branch of The Sweeney, are a reminder of the bad old days.