Netflix’s Dealer Review: Shady, Scary and Riveting

Dealer premiered on 10th Marc 2021 on Netflix. The 10-episode-long series is a found-footage series starring Abdramane Diakité, Mohamed Boudouh, Sébastien Houbani, Idir Azougli, Julien Meurice, Abdillah Assoumani, Romain Vissol, and Jean-Toussaint Bernard alongside other cast members.

A Found Footage Thriller!

Dealer is set in a found-footage format and revolves around two filmmakers, director Franck (Sébastien Houbani) and cameraman Thomas (Julien Meurice) who set out to meet an aspiring rapper in the south of France named Tony (Abdramane Diakite), the leader of a drug-dealing gang who was just released from prison. His rap caught the eyes of a recording label which he recorded while he was in the prison and therefore, Franck and Thomas decide to travel all the way and document everything.

But their entry into the hood does not see a warming welcome but instead gunshots and rivalry over the turf. As the series unfolds, we see Franck establish a bond with Tony and Thomas’s fear of being killed as Tony often encounters guns, police and life and death situations. At the same time, the record label seems to give zero f**ks about their members’ safety and push them to get more dangerous footages oftentimes forcing them into a pit!

Dealer features episodes that are a maximum of 15 minutes long and it looks like a movie broken into engaging segments and the format works well for the show. The bitesize episodes add to the intrigue factor of the show instead of giving long episodes of nothing actually leading anywhere leading to a lag. The series format shows everything one needs to know in bits and bytes leaving no exact place for boredom. There are a few great action sequences that use bodycams perfectly, but they are very few and far in between. 

While the series is interesting and has pros of its own there is something that doesn’t feel right about the depiction of Black folks. The depiction of whites as dangerous in a hood because they don’t belong there and the drug and gang thing is just for people of colour is often off-putting. But then there are self-aware moments in the series where elders talk about the stereotypical perception of people of colour and how it ruins them and their lives further.

Dealer, in terms of its storyline, is not new even though the format it comes forth sort of is. A lot of time you know what’s coming next and you can’t deny the inevitability of gang movie clichés that are seen in here too but with characters and storyline that are well crafted and indicate the possibility of redemption, you’ll want to spend your time in the series. Dealer never loses momentum, and never loses its consciousness. Throughout the 10 episodes, we witness character growth that doesn’t feel ambiguous or pushed in forcefully making the series one good watch.

Stream It or Skip It

STREAM IT! Dealer is a good entertainer if you’re looking for a short series with an engaging storyline and violence. Though the storyline might look like various other movies/series of the same genre, Dealer is still one good watch

Dealer is now streaming on Netflix.

Read our other reviews here.