La French (2014)
Directed by Cédric Jimenez

Film Synopsis

In the 1970s, Marseille is the centre of one of the largest and most sophisticated drugs trafficking networks in the world.  A key player in this filthy business is Gaëtan Zampa, a seemingly untouchable gangland boss who is one of the leading players in the French Connection, a worldwide consortium of drugs traffickers.  Aware that his city is now in the media spotlight, the mayor of Marseille, Gaston Defferre, announces a redoubling of efforts to combat the growing trade in drugs.  To that end a redoubtable young lawyer, Pierre Michel, is appointed the head of a department devoted to combating the drugs barons and dismantling the trafficking rings operating out of Marseille.

Giving up his fairly mundane job as a judge for juveniles in Metz, Pierre moves with his family to Marseille and assumes his new duties with a fierce determination to crush the traffickers once and for all.  He assembles a crack team and is soon on the case with a vengeance.  Pierre begins by rounding up all of the petty criminals in Zampa's employ, in the hope that this will cause the gangster's empire to start to disintegrate from the bottom up.  As the personal battle intensifies, the judge makes himself many powerful and dangerous enemies, but the threat of reprisals does not deter him from prosecuting his war against the seemingly invincible crime lords with utter ruthlessness.  His wife Jacqueline struggles to comprehend Pierre's single-mindedness and soon begins fearing for her own life when the gangster bosses start fighting back...