Quick Look: La Balance (1982)

If you like Miami Vice (the 80's TV series) and you like foreign films, then you will like La Balance.  It takes place in Paris, and the spoken language is French.  It is a police/crime drama, with a bit of action, it moves at a good pace, and at 98 minutes the story plays out well without too much fluff.
The movie opens with the murder of a police informant, a "balance", so the detectives who were using him must quickly find a replacement.  The police having been trying to take down a local mob boss named Roger Massina (Maurice Ronet) but with very little success.  They settle on a low level street hood named Dede (Philippe Leotard); they storm his apartment and blackmail him into helping them try to set up Massina.
The attempt to take down Massina goes wrong and turns into a shoot out and foot chase - a nice little action sequence.  Some other elements that make this worth seeing: the police are portrayed as the bullies who are as lawless as the criminals, and there is a great dynamic in the main characters that Dede's streetwalker girlfriend Nicole (Nathalie Baye) is desired by Massina.  As with most foreign films the ending is not Hollywood, making it twice as enjoyable.