'Inhuman Resources' aka 'Dérapages' Preview: Will Alain Delambre avenge what greedy corporate games do to him?
The quarantine season has seen a boom in Netflix shows and what better way to entertain its audience with some binge and chill than foreign crime thrillers.
Joining the league of the phenomenal 'Money Heist', and arriving right in time for some much-needed competition to Scandinavian noirs like 'Bordertown', is Netflix's 'Inhuman Resources' aka 'Dérapages' — an unfortunate twisted story of an aging man of principles finding himself as an unwitting pawn in a gritty corporate crime.
Directed by Ziad Doueiri ('Lila Says', 'The Insult', 'The Attack' and 'West Beirut') and written by Pierre Lemaitre and Perrine Margaine, the French miniseries is also loosely based on Lemaitre's book 'Cadres noirs'.
It revolves around the 57-year-old Alain Delambre (Eric Cantona) who finds himself unemployed after a decent living so far. Out of desperation to keep his family afloat and sustaining, Delambre can be seen doing all kinds of odd jobs in the trailer — a path that sees him frequently humiliated, thus laying the foundation for his growing eagerness to find a job with a proper paycheque.
From getting kicked by his employer at the warehouse to just being able to make a respectable living is what clouds like an obsession in Delambre's mind, the only respite in all of this is his loving wife, Nicole (Suzanne Clément)and their pregnant daughter.
Soon, however, opportunity shines in the form of a lucrative job opening. Suited up and whatnot, Delambre makes his appearance at the interview of the seemingly attractive job, and everything seems to be going well, but here's the catch: a staged hostage situation to apparently estimate his qualifications for the job.
Shady as it sounds, Delambre sees it as the only way out of the wormhole his life is headed towards and indulged willingly.
The recruitment officer tells Delambre that his client Alexandre Dorfmann (Alex Lutz) needs to test him and four other candidates, and the trailer cuts to scenes of a sureshot menacing crimelord, who is clearly using these candidates for an ulterior motive.
The company is already headed on a path downhill. Automating everything, they plan on hiring about a thousand employees and keeping just the five under constant vigilance — something that despite his wife's warning, Delambre readily heads into because desperation to sustain a living looms large.
Thus sparks a twisted tale of corporate greed and capitalist overlords pawning off innocent men whose only need in life is a steady livelihood.
However, the trailer also teases Delambre sniffing the dirt on Dorfmann and his accomplices, before presumably doing something rash enough to land him in prison — something that the trailer opens with.
Whether Delambre goes to prison after exacting revenge on Dorfmann or the narratives kicks off from his time in prison, contemplating what he did before the series of misfortune rolls in again, is yet to be seen.
But for now, Netflix has set a prim network of all things that keep a crime thriller intriguing, filled with what looks like a plot cut with precision, and just the trailer being a brilliant display of Cantona and Lutz's expertise.
'Inhuman Resources' aka 'Dérapages' premieres on Friday, May 15, on Netflix.