• Home
  • News
  • Top Picks
    • Movies & Films: Top 25
    • Documentaries: Top 25
    • Films For Students: Top 10
    • Music Videos: Top 10
  • Categories
    • Film
    • Documentary
    • Shorts
    • Blog
    • Calendar
    • Links
    • About

Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World

Libertarian Movies, Films & Documentaries

L.627 (1992)

Tagged: Legalize Drugs, Working for government

A dedicated French drug enforcement agent fights a hopeless battle to win the “War on Drugs.” [ L.627 credits: Dir: Bertrand Tavernier/ Didier Bezace, Jean-Paul Comart, Charlotte Kady/ 145 min/ Drama, Foreign Language/ France/ In French with English subtitles/ Legalize Drugs, Working for Government]

L.627Apparently the futile and counterproductive nature of the “War on Drugs” is an international phenomenon. This French film portrays the working life of one of the “good guys,” a policeman who does his best to rid the streets of illegal drugs. Despite his hard work he accomplishes nothing, and the corrupting character of the law degrades him and everyone in his department. As he says of himself and his fellow drug warriors near the end of the film, “We’re all zeroes.”

“L.627 is in many respects a well made film, with effective use of music, an uncompromised focus on the subject, and a sense of irony.”

His drug enforcement agency operates much like the U.S. Post Office. It’s undercapitalized (because money earmarked for it is spent instead on new carpet and floral arrangements at the head office) and the staff is demoralized, corrupt, and lazy. But it’s the Post Office with the authority to use force, so it’s physically abusive of the citizenry as well.

At times the effect of all this is humorous, funny because it’s true. But the emotion this film evokes most is pity—pity for the well-meaning but hopelessly misled policeman, pity for the drug addicts who must prostitute themselves to pay the artificially high price of drugs, pity even for the Third World pushers, whose misguided ambition to make money from drugs draws them into a dangerous and unhappy criminal lifestyle.

Despite the film’s length of almost two-and-a-half hours, it’s really more a detailed portrait than a story. Nothing much changes by the end, but of course that’s the point. The “War on Drugs” is necessarily never-ending because it feeds on itself. L.627 is in many respects a well made film, with effective use of music, an uncompromised focus on the subject, and a sense of irony. However, it’s also long and mostly downbeat, likely to appeal most to aficionados of European cinema.

External Reviews

“In his remarkable new film L.627, Bertrand Tavernier takes an impassioned inside look at the day-to-day activities of a small, ill-equipped branch of the Paris Drug Squad. With extraordinary documentary realism, the director has produced one of his best and most challenging films.”
–Variety

How to See It

Amazon (DVD-Europe)
Amazon (Instant Video)
Online Video Search

Links

IMDB
Wikipedia

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

  • RSS
  • Twitter

Featured Post

badass beauty queen

Badass Beauty Queen | Documentary

Anastasia Lin wins the annual Miss World Canada beauty contest and uses her newfound notoriety to campaign against human rights abuses in communist China. [ Badass Beauty Queen credits: Dir: Theresa Kowall-Shipp/ Anastasia Lin/ 100 min/ Documentary/ Libertarian Heroes, Anti-Socialism/ Country/ … Continue Reading

Snowflake

Snowflake: Bud Sugar Song Mocks Social Justice Crybullies

Snowflake is a great new song from the band Bud Sugar. It mocks social justice crybullies in a lighthearted way and to a catchy beat. This is just great fun. Some links for the band: YouTube  Instagram  Facebook  Twitter  Patreon  Homepage … Continue Reading

A Pity You’ve Never Seen An Old Movie: 10 Suggested Films

Per the New York Post, "A new study finds that less than a quarter of millennials have watched an old movie from start to finish that was made back in the 1940s or 50s and only a third have seen one from the 1960s." This is something of a cultural tragedy, as so much of what is great in the larger body of … Continue Reading

Themes

Abuse of power American revolution Anti-draft Anti-regulation Anti-slavery Anti-socialism Anti-taxation Anti-war Ayn Rand Corrupt government Creator as hero Democide Econ 101 Eminent domain Equality & law Escape from socialism Freedom of speech Free press as hero Government as bigot Government as torturer Government enforced morality Government healthcare Government schools Incompetent government Individualism John Stossel Law & liberty Legalize Drugs Libertarian heroes Libertarianism 101 Power corrupts Power worship Pro-capitalism Pro-immigration Propaganda Psychiatric coercion Resistance to tyranny Right to secede Search & seizure Second amendment Sexual liberty Social tolerance Unions & monopolies Voluntarism Working for government

Genres/Categories

Action-Adventure Animated Biography Blog Comedy Documentary Drama Family Featured Film Foreign History Horror Music-Dance Netflix News Romance SciFi-Fantasy Shorts Thriller Upcoming Western

About Miss Liberty

This site is a collection of films and documentaries of particular interest to libertarians (and those interested in libertarianism). It began as a book, Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium, where many of the recommended films were first reviewed. The current collection has grown to now more than double the number in that original list, and it’s growing still.

  • RSS

© 2022 Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World. All Rights Reserved

 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.