Most probably heard the phrase ‘French cinema’ and assume it’s all just corset dramas. But Olivier Marchal’s Squad 36 does its best for Netflix viewers to rethink that stereotype. Here, he takes us to Paris, home to Antoine Cerda (Victor Belmondo), a cop.

The Parisian is also a guy who fights people in underground games. His activities get him a suspension, and this suspension is coming in at the worst time as someone is targeting his team. By ‘targeting’ I mean killing or kidnapping them, and he can’t even investigate.

Of course, Antoine still investigates, and he discovers that his team has associations with bad people. And one teammate, Sami Belkaim (Tewfik Jallab), tries to cleanup his old messes. Despite that, both he and Antoine have to realize that their actions have consequences.

Let’s get to what’s good in Squad 36, the happy medium of Marchal’s work. It doesn’t have the whiteness of Carbone nor the forced UN vibe in Rogue City. Its critique on racism is more subtle, as the force relegates ‘ethnics’ in lower jobs.

Marchal’s new film has him sticking more to the cops than the robbers side, but somehow, Squad 36 is more like Carbone in that it feels coherent. A lot of watching this involves observing Antoine’s investigation skills, and Belmondo is a watchable actor.

The one thing about Squad 36 is that it feels like we’re watching repetitive scenes, like how many times is it going to show higher ups be cold bureaucrats? And how many times is Antoine getting suspensions from said higher ups?

Of course, when Antoine gets that second suspension, another teammate is on the receiving end of gunshots. Another supervisor (Yvan Attal) sends kinds words in person. Antoine politely burshes him aside because of course that supervisor is being fake.

Squad 36 only gets a jolt when Said’s idea of fixing his mess is to, you guessed it, kill someone in his team. He also does the same to someone’s wife who runs to him instead of running away. This is the first time of a few where a bad guy kills someone they no longer need.

All of Squad 36‘s setup leads to a penultimate scene where one final act may stop all the violence beforehand. This is, supposedly, a film with action elements, and certain scenes feel inevitable. Those scenes are normally exciting, but the supposedly big scene here feels like nothing.

There’s a cyclical nature to Squad 36, as it attempts to plant seeds that theoretically beat fruit with its ending, In a way, and withough giving anything away, what happens in the end reflect that. I’ve seen more grim films recently, but the ending viewers get here is almost that, and not in a good way.

Watch Squad 36 on Netflix.