Loosely based on real events, the new french action-thriller The Connection follows the 1975 drug war that was led out of the crime-ridden city of Marseille, France. A counterpoint to William Friedkin’s 1971 classic The French Connection, The Connection is evenly styled in its period piece dressings but plays to overly familiar drug-war conventions that leave the overall effort as a breathlessly wasted time-out.

The ’70s styled policier, starring Jean Dujardin as lead magistrate Pierre Michel, is only mildly compelling in its hard-boiled investigations and tough-guy law enforcing, against central kingpin Gaëtan ‘Tany’ Zampa (Gilles Lellouche). Lush French landscapes effectively offer pleasantly transporting scenes, but the heart of this story tracks to the same beats that make up other formulaic policiers – credit the naturally charismatic Dujardin and Lellouche for forming a potent dynamic as cat and mouse to drive this story.

The Connection is evenly styled in its period piece dressings but plays to overly familiar drug-war conventions that leaves the overall effort as a breathlessly wasted time-out.

Directed by Cédric Jimenez from a script by himself and Audrey Diwan, the film was shot on 35mm film, which lends rich grains to a film that could have implored much more grittiness to serve its story. The sprawling lines of corruption that link drug kingpins, gangsters, police and city officials fail to hold power in any court. It’s not so much a misfire in not landing power in its punches, it’s that it just appears to throw so few.

The Connection spans a years-long story of the relentless efforts of Michel, who chases Lellouche and his thuggish cohorts to the point of detachment from his own family and friends. Here, around the film’s second act, things track well enough as a tension-building action film, but a half-time re-launch of Michel into the case feels empty in its effort. Lellouche, meanwhile, loses his built up baddie behaviors in the third act with middling regrets and worries that attempt to humanize his character, but only deflate a story that has already lost its steam.

The Connection, while stylishly conceived and with formidable talent in front of the camera, ends up spinning its own wheels as an aimless pursuit.

The Connection (La French) is in theaters today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx41FbyvSMw