From its exhilarating opening shots of a group of black and Arab teenagers heading into central Paris to join the crowds celebrating France’s 2018 World Cup soccer victory to its bleak and chilling conclusion, the Oscar-nominated Les Misérables is a thrilling and gut-wrenching experience and marks the full-length feature debut of a talented and assured filmmaker.

But don’t let the title mislead you. Director Ladj Ly has not made another adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 classic novel but instead has crafted a gripping, gritty, modern policier that addresses the same issues that obsessed Hugo: poverty, injustice, police brutality. Inspired by a quote from Hugo’s masterpiece (“Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”), Ly’s movie graphically examines how French society, through the actions of one police squad, reaps what it sows.

Expanding on his 2018 Cesar Award-nominated short film of the same title (with a script co-written written by Ly, Giordano Gederlini, and costar Alexis Manenti), the director sets his drama in the impoverished working-class Parisian banlieue (suburb) of Montfermeil that inspired part of Hugo’s book and where the director grew up (and still lives) as the son of Malian immigrants.

It’s the first day on the job for Stéphane (a stoic Damien Bonnard), a divorced cop who has transferred from Cherbourg to the anti-crime brigade to be closer to his son. His slicked-back hair instantly garners him the nickname of “Greaser” from his new partners Chris (a fiery Manenti)—who also has earned his own moniker, “Pink Pig,” from the local community—and Gwada (Djebril Zonga).

As they patrol the neighborhood’s rundown housing projects and crowded streets, the play-by–the book Stéphane (who wears his bullet-proof vest while his jaded colleagues could care less) quickly discovers that the volatile and casually racist Chris is a loose cannon, aggressively harassing teenage girls at a bus stop, engaging in petty bribery, and contemptuously disparaging the people he’s policing. Although Gwada is of African descent like most of the residents of Montfermeil, he is quietly complicit in Chris’s abusive behavior.

When a group of Roma men from a local circus threaten violence if their stolen lion cub is not found and returned, Chris knows to troll Instagram on his phone to find a photo of the culprit, teenage Issa (a heartrending Issa Perica), with the cub. What starts as a farcical search turns deadly serious when the squad, having found and handcuffed Issa, are attacked by the young man’s rock-throwing friends. In the ensuing chaos, Issa is seriously injured.

Noticing that the incident has been filmed by a drone camera and fearing a riot and punishment if the video is released, Chris insists the squad track down the drone’s owner, a young boy named Buzz (Al Hassan Ly), and retrieve the memory card. His Inspector Javert-like quest will have terrible repercussions.

Ly and director of photography Julien Poupard (Divines) apply a documentary visual style to capture the quartier and its residents with vivid authenticity, switching viewpoints from the squad’s roving unmarked police car to the drone offering sweeping views of the action below. As a result, we see an immigrant community treated with brazen disrespect by law enforcement and seething with anger, especially among its young men, whose raw vital energy is set to explode in celebratory joy or rebellious fury. Likewise, we observe police officers, some corrupted by their power and racism, working under stressful, tense situations. Everyone shares the misery in this neighborhood.

Almost 160 years after Victor Hugo published his novel, les misérables are still with us, as Ly’s powerful and suspenseful film reminds us.