Law Breakers

Law Breakers (original title: Les Assassins de l'ordre) is a 1971 Franco-Italian courtroom crime drama directed by Marcel Carné. It adapts Jean Laborde's novel of the same name, which itself drew on a real-life incident in which a man accused of stealing a watch was beaten to death by three police officers.

An idealistic magistrate is assigned to examine the case of two policemen and their inspector who beat a suspect to death. By the time the matter reaches court, every witness and the widow's lawyer have been intimidated into silence, and the magistrate himself comes under heavy pressure to abandon the file and let the three killers go free.

The film stars Jacques Brel, Paola Pitagora, Michael Lonsdale and Charles Denner. It opened in France on 7 May 1971 and was subsequently screened at the 7th Moscow International Film Festival and out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. Drawing more than a million admissions in France, it ranked among the year's top-grossing releases there.