Olivier Marchal’s new film is called “Overdose” and has been available since November 4, 2022 on Prime Video. A dark and violent thriller, with a large cast and a scenario with multiple challenges. Focus on this story of insomniac cops launched on the trail of a murderous go fast.
What’s this Overdose ?
After Bronx on Netflix, which had met with great success around the world, it is now on Prime Video that Olivier Marchal presents his new film, Overdose. Adapted from the novel by Pierre Pouchairet Deadly traffics, Overdose tells since several points of view the interception of an important go fast between Spain and France. We thus see the drug traffickers at work, but also the Toulouse narcotics squad on their heels, as well as a team from the Paris criminal police investigating a murder case. Murders that will turn out to be linked to the go fast in question…
We don’t get over it, and Olivier Marchal therefore continues his dark exploration of the police and criminal worlds in this new film, which we will still easily find more violent and dark than its predecessors. The metal of the bodies and the weapons, the leather and the canvas of the clothes, everything is black, clearly the filmmaker’s favorite color. And whether under the Spanish sun or the snow of the Pyrenees, the characters ofOverdose tirelessly carry around their dark circles and worried looks.
Overdose chronicles a bloody clash between cops and thugs. What distinguishes it from Carbon and of Bronx, Marchal’s two previous films, the first of which was only interested in thugs, and the second only in cops. With Overdosethe filmmaker offers a view of the two universes, and to do this has assembled a very solid casting.
A nice cast for an choral detective film
Once is not custom, Olivier Marchal offers the main role of his film to an actress. In the skin of Sara Bellaïche, at the head of the “stups” of Toulouse, Sofia Essaïdi succeeds in her return to the feature film, eight years later mea culpa by Fred Cavaye. At her side, she can count on her faithful right arm Bob Fontana, played by Kool Shen. She is not the only actress to pull out of the game since we can also appreciate the play all in perverse sensuality of Naïma Rodric, who plays Vanessa Sanchez, the companion of the very violent and main bad guy ofOverdose : Eduardo García. this one is interpreted by Alberto Ammann, famous for his role in the series Narcos.
In the role of a cop infiltrated within the team of traffickers, we find Nicolas Cazalé. He must be careful not to burn his cover with the former racing driver Willy De Berg (Olivier Marchal Francis Renaud’s faithful collaborator), or even the mad Dog Said Masriche (Nassim Lyes). On the cop side, Assaâd Bouab plays an important role in the skin of Richard Cross, head of the Parisian criminal police. He leads a duo of young cops, played by Zoé Marchal and Moussa Mansaly, the latter being well known with his role in the series Valid. Other well-known names are in the cast, including Catherine Allégret, Kenza Fortas and Simon Abkarian.
Each has its impact, greater or lesser, on the plot ofOverdosebut none is a landscape in this polar with multiple ramifications.
French crime fiction is a dirty job, but someone has to stick to it
Overdose probably does not have the quality of 36 Quai des Goldsmithsnor the ambition of The Lyonnais or the tragic intention of MR73. But it takes up numerous elements from several films in its author’s filmography, as if it were always necessary to remember that the French whodunnit with chiselled faces is still alive. So, we can always say that the time of macho punchlines is over, of course. That the time of the Manichean detective film despite its few gray areas is more than dated, it’s true. But at the risk of displeasing, Olivier Marchal insists in this veintelling again and again these stories of cops and thugs, unrolling a score made of over-written dialogues, hysterical shouting matches, endless nights, deafening shootings.
Overdose does not want to say or show anything other than what it shows and tells: a violent thriller concluded by a pessimistic morality. It’s appreciable sometimes, maybe it’s not often… Today, because Olivier Marchal is the only one to offer such strictly detective cinema, if some will say that no one does worse, he is perhaps just as true that no one does it better…
