A simple police procedural with neither the style nor the story to set it apart, Le Petit Lieutenant gets by on the strength of its performances. Jalil Lespert plays Lieutenant Antoine Derouère, a flic from the sticks who's assigned to a tough Paris precinct immediately upon graduation from the police academy. The fresh-faced youngster has a jutting, naive chin and a halo of pure intentions; even when he gets sloshed at his welcoming party, he remains cheerful and cherubic. But if Herman Melville taught us anything, it's that a pretty boy won't stay blessed for long, and the quotidian police work that occupies the first act is stocked with mild dread.
Le Petit Lieutenant has a plot like a rolling boulder. Let's just say it goes where you think it will from the beginning. At a certain point, it turns its focus to a tough lady detective (Nathalie Baye), newly sober and returned to the police force. She tries to lead her department by example, but her sex (one of her inferiors makes approving reference to her "dancer's ass") and her severity prevent anyone from emulating her.
The bad guysâRussian immigrantsâare so flat-out depraved you can't help but suspect the movie would appeal to the xenophobic element of the French audience. (Maybe that's why the noble Moroccan detective appears, as though in an apology for the overtones of nativism, for an overlong tableau with his adorable mixed-race children.) But the primary characters are lovable and pitiable, and the streets of Paris no less interesting for their ordinary grime. It's like a solid American TV movie, except with an occasional vineyard and the stormy Le Havre seashore to rest your eyes. 
