Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dealer’ On Netflix, A Found-Footage Drama About A Film Crew Getting Way Too Involved With A Gang Leader

Found-footage movies and shows have a bit of a fatigue factor around them; because the story is being told in something resembling real time, from the perspective of one of the participants, it’s hard to generate character elements and story beats. It’s one of the reasons why only a few projects shot in that style have had any success. Now, from France comes a gritty found-footage series called Dealer. Read on for more.

DEALER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A scared man talking into a camera as he hides out from what sounds like a firefight outside. “I didn’t want this,” he says. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

The Gist: In a found-footage format, we flash back to see two filmmakers, director Franck (Sébastien Houbani) and cameraman Thomas (Julien Meurice), setting up GoPros in the car they’re driving. They’re in the south of France driving into a rough neighborhood to meet Tony (Abdramane Diakite), the leader of a drug-dealing gang who was just released from prison; a rap video he made from there caught the eye of record executives, who sent Franck out to shoot a music video.

Right away things get a little dicey when Tony’s guys, including his co-gang-leader Moussa (Mohamed Boudouh), take their IDs at gunpoint then drive away with their car and equipment after Franck and Thomas get out. Naturally distrustful of these two guys coming along with cameras, they threaten both filmmakers until Tony comes and tells his guys that they’re OK.

There’s an allusion to one of their members being killed the night before, so it seems that things are tense between rival gangs over turf. Then, while Franck and Thomas follow Tony around, a guy drives by on a motorcycle, shooting an automatic weapon in the air. None of this is what Franck bargained for.

As they get in deeper, Tony and his gang find out that a rival gang leader, Steve (Idir Azougli) is looking to invade their turf. Tony is hesitant to start a gang war, but Moussa wants to burn the rival gang down. Franck and Thomas are increasingly caught in the middle; Franck is told by the record executive who sent him that he should continue to film and he’s starting to realize how raw and compelling what he’s getting is. Thomas just wants to leave.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The found-footage vibe is reminiscent of movies like The River or movies like The Blair Witch Project, but married to the gang-related pieces of The Wire.

Our Take: Dealer (original name: Caïd) has a format that befits its found-footage style; the ten episodes are short, running from 8 to 15 minutes (most of the episodes are 9 or 10 minutes). It’s essentially a 90-minute movie broken up into ten segments. That format works for the show; food-footage style can get a bit tiresome at longer lengths, so the episodic format can give you as little or as big a bite as you want.

There is a temptation to barrel through the series in one go, given the fact that you’re getting a stay-or-go decision point every 10 minutes. It’s not a particularly complex story to follow. We’re just wondering if the story itself is one that’s worth being followed.

First is its problematic vision of “the hood,” with people of color posing and threatening white filmmakers that obviously don’t belong there. Tony is super-aggressive towards Franck and Thomas, and it feels like screenwriters Nicolas Peufaillit, Ange Basterga and Nicolas Lopez (the latter two also direct) haven’t really given his character much to do besides being a stereotypical gang thug. In fact, Moussa gets more character development than Tony does, as Tony invites the filmmakers into Moussa’s mother’s house, and Moussa has to deal with the fact that these outsiders now know a little about his life and know his mom.

But it’s also too contrived to believe. We’re with Thomas; we’d get the hell out of that situation as soon as the bullets started to fly. But at some point, Franck turns from a craven creative type who doesn’t want to be there to someone who really believes something special will come out of being embedded with Tony’s gang. It’s a change in faith that isn’t earned, but needs to be there in order to sell the fact that these filmmakers are still there, even as a massive gang war is starting to break out.

It does feel like it’ll come to some sort of inevitable conclusion, where some combination of Tony, Thomas and Franck — or maybe even all three — wind up dead. But we got about four episodes in and stopped caring about any of those characters’ fates.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: A bewildered Franck turns to Thomas as he tries to escape the shooting and says, “Fuck. What is this?”

Sleeper Star: Mohamed Boudouh, who plays Moussa, has the most character development, and he reaches a depth of emotion that the rest of the cast doesn’t get a chance to reach.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Tony’s crew tell Franck and Thomas that they don’t know a Tony, we don’t know if they’re kidding or purposely intimidating these obviously fearful filmmakers.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite the short-form episodes and relatively fast pace, Dealer doesn’t really say anything new. In fact, some of its notions are more old-fashioned than the format indicates.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Watch Dealer On Netflix