“Overdose” is a French action thriller film that is all about fast action and quick thrills, which are visually enjoyable but lack any depth or layer whatsoever. Dedicated to the memory of the great Jean-Paul Belmondo, too ambitiously in my personal opinion, the film follows two separate units of the French police force as they unite and work together to bring down a notorious drug gang while also trying to find the killers of two children. Although the plot has linear convolutions and the usual twists and turns, “Overdose” is to be watched only as a no-brainer entertainer with no further expectations.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Overdose’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
A man by the name of Igor Reynald is released from prison to be welcomed back to a life of crime by an acquaintance, Eduardo Garcia. The latter takes Igor back to the compound of his boss, a notorious drug lord in control of the whole area called Alfonso Castroviejo, and it seems like Igor has worked for him earlier. While he had been away for some time in jail, the man has not changed his ways, it seems, as he catches up with the rest of the gang. This criminal team, which smuggles and distributes drugs throughout parts of Spain and France, also includes a younger man named Said, who is at present engrossed with his new girlfriend, Leila, and an ex-professional car racer, Willy de Berg. A plan to deliver a fresh stash of drugs is soon made, and Igor is made a part of it too, but it is then revealed that Igor Reynald is working as an undercover agent for the police inside Castroviejo’s gang.
Sara Bellaiche is the head of the narcotics squad of the Toulouse police force and is under quite some pressure from the chief commissioner for being unable to catch the leading drug smugglers in the region. It seems that Sara has been hatching out a plan for quite some days now and is close to finalizing the details of a grand scheme to catch the criminals. It is as part of this plan that she has hired Igor Reynald, who used to be undercover police a few years earlier but had lost his way with drugs and had ended up in prison. As part of the police’s instructions, Reynald goes back to Castroviejo’s den and works with Garcia, but secretly also keeps informing Sara and her team about any new developments.
In the French capital of Paris, a horrid scene is left behind in a children’s hospital when two young boys, Jerome and Ali, are mercilessly killed in their hospital beds, which happened to be inside the same room. The head of the Paris police, Richard Cross, investigates the matter with his team and tries to find any clues. Within a couple of days, Ali’s mother is also found dead and thrown into the Seine River, and security camera footage shows a man and woman in a black van common to both areas of the crime. Some more investigation reveals that the woman happens to be a Moroccan national by the name of Leila, and soon this suspect of theirs is found dead at a scene of a shootout on the highway. As part of his own investigation, Richard now meets up with Sara from the narcotics squad, and together they prepare to take down Castroviejo’s gang and a drug empire.
What Ultimately Happens When The Police Catch Up To Castroviejo’s Gang?
As Castroviejo’s gang rolls out of their compound to drive a long way across Spain to France in order to make the drug drops at two separate locations, the kingpin stays behind and gives the entire responsibility of the operation to Eduardo Garcia. While on the way, though, things go wrong for Said and his girlfriend Leila, as the latter passes away from a drug overdose, and the boyfriend pulls off the highway to help her. The cars were already being chased at the time, and the police followed Said’s car, resulting in a huge gunfight, with Said escaping with the rest of his gang members while Leila’s body was left behind. Richard gets news of the sudden death of his prime suspect and goes over to the place while Sara is also here, as she and her team were keeping an eye on the drug convoy. Although Reynald keeps informing them of any change of plans among the gang members, Sara also stays very worried about her informant’s safety. The gang makes a sudden change of route and heads up to a village in the hills, where they spend the night at a local villager’s house, possibly to avoid any police attention. The villager tries spying on the men, and Garcia mercilessly shoots him dead, ordering Reynald to do the same to his wife and young son. While all this has been going on, Richard’s team comes across a woman in a dangerous neighborhood who provides them with important details about this major case. From her information, they figure out the spot of the second drug drop-off and the man who is buying the drugs.
As the gang leaves the village the next day, the police drug enforcement squad prepares at the spot of the first drug drop-off, which Reynald informs them of that morning. As the buyer arrives and the handover is about to happen, a bus full of schoolchildren come to the place for a day trip, making it impossible for the police to reveal themselves and arrest the perpetrators. Nonetheless, Sara and her team wait patiently, and once the gang members are about to drive away, they chase and apprehend some of them. Reynald, Said, and a couple of others manage to escape the police, and Said now grows suspicious of a snitch inside his gang. But like the stereotypical manner in which his character is prepared, Said suspects the wrong man and kills him while trusting to keep Reynald alive. They now contact the second buyer, prepare a drop-off location close to Paris, and ride away toward the far-off destination. On the other side, the police take most of the gang members, including Garcia, into custody and interrogate them constantly to not only accept their drug-smuggling crimes but also to find out any information about the murderers of the two children at the hospital. While one of the perpetrators is now clear to have been Leila, who has since died, the ex-racing driver, de Berg, mentions a man named Wahid as possibly being the other killer. The rest of the crew keeps silent about any of their illegal activities, like the hardened criminals that they are, but ultimately all of them are to be taken to court by the police.
Around the same time that these men are being questioned and investigated, the French police conduct a joint operation with the Spanish police to arrest Alfonso Castroviejo from his family house. The police force gets rid of all the men guarding the drug lord, and Castroviejo, who had learned of the arrests of his men and buyer, sits down, prepared to be attacked by the police at any time. The man tries to get out of the compound by killing one of the policemen and putting on his outfit, but ultimately gets identified and killed by the others in the police force. Later that day in France, all the arrested members of the gang are being transported to the capital, probably to be taken to court and put in prison, when an accident on the highway creates a sudden upturn in the situation. Some of Garcia’s men and his female company manage to attack the police officers in their car, and a shootout on the highway follows. While all the other members are shot dead, Garcia manages to escape the scene and hides in the local town. On the television set inside a house, he breaks into, Garcia watches the wife and son of the farmer he had killed in the village on the hills earlier arrive at the police station to give evidence. It becomes clear that Reynald had actually not killed them when he had been told to, and Garcia also now realizes that it was Reynald who was acting as the mole in his gang. He quickly gets in touch with the second buyer, who has still not received the drugs, and together they prepare a plan to confront Reynald and punish him for his betrayal.
‘Overdose’ Ending Explained: What Happens To Reynald And Garcia At The End? Why Had Wahid And Leila Killed The Children?
The police receive information about a sudden change of meeting spot for the second drug handover, and Sara now grows more fearful than ever that Reynald’s life might be in danger. The entire police squad tries their best to find out the new meeting spot and ultimately traces it down to an abandoned building in the vicinity of Paris. By the time they arrive, though, Reynald and Said have already arrived and started their transaction. But Garcia gets in the way of things as he confronts Reynald and gets him captive in the basement. Garcia had earlier been ordered by Castroviejo to kill Said, who was only a foolish member who got them into trouble, and now Garcia delivers on these orders. He stabs Said to death and then tortures Reynald for hours. The police force finally arrives, and a fight breaks out between the two sides, with Garcia and the drug buyer both being arrested. Sara finds Reynald in an extremely beat-up condition, and the man passes away from his wounds soon after. Sara cannot contain herself any longer and is about to kill Garcia, but another police officer stops her and then himself kills the criminal. It seems that the police knew neither Garcia nor Castroviejo would receive proper justice due to their rich corrupting capabilities, and so they did not mind killing the criminals to put an end to their activities.
Another man, Wahid, is also arrested from the abandoned building, as he had been hiding in the basement during the fight. Wahid now admits everything to the police and tells them what exactly happened in his native village in Morocco, which also happened to be the native home of Leila and young Ali, who had been murdered in the hospital. After being enemies for generations, the families of Leila and Wahid had decided to become friends and work together, and the two were also supposed to get married as a marker of this new friendship. As both families were essentially drug dealers and smugglers, they kept an eye on any suspicious activity in the village, and one day, Wahid’s father saw Ali’s father visit the French embassy in Morocco rather suspiciously. The man was immediately picked up and tortured for days before being killed, and Wahid was ordered by his father to find Ali and his mother and put an end to their lives as revenge. It was for this that Wahid and Leila had come to France and Said also happened to be Wahid’s cousin. With the help of Said’s connections, he tracked Ali down to the hospital in Paris, as the young boy was very sick and was being treated there and had gone with Leila to kill him. But, when the two assassins had gone over, another boy, Jerome, was also present in the same room by sheer coincidence because the nurse supposed to take him away for some medical tests had been busy. As a result, he, too, was killed by Leila, while Wahid killed Ali and then tracked down his mother and killed her too. While Wahid is put away in prison after his confession, the police investigate whether Ali’s father had actually been an informant and find out an even sadder reality. Ali’s father had actually visited the French embassy to inquire about a medical procedure that Ali required for his treatment, and it had nothing to do with Wahid’s family or their drug business. The whole thing that began and led to this entire mega-plan by the police, which ultimately brought down the drug operations and the murderers, was, after all, conducted in vain out of a horrible misunderstanding.
“Overdose” is a 2022 Drama Thriller film directed by Olivier Marchal.
