Les Misérables — Characters & Cast

To do the job decently and keep the situation from escalating, while discovering that decency has no institutional support.

He arrives as a transfer to the Anti-Crime Squad and functions as our eyes, learning the unwritten rules of the beat. His initial discomfort with his partners' methods hardens into objection, but the film denies him the satisfaction of being the good cop who fixes anything — by the climax he is simply one of three men in a stairwell with a weapon in his hand and no good options.

To hold absolute authority over his territory and prove that his way is the only thing keeping the estate in check.

The squad's swaggering engine, who polices by provocation and treats fear as a tool of the trade. Chris never repents; instead the film strips his bravado away by force, leaving him bleeding from a bottle to the face and dependent on the very people he has spent the day humiliating.

To belong — to the squad and to the neighbourhood — without having to choose between them.

Raised in the same world he now polices, Gwada absorbs Chris's excesses in silence and pays for that silence when a split-second act during an arrest sets the crisis in motion. His arc is the film's quietest and most devastating: the man caught between two belongings ends up betraying both.

To preserve his position and the fragile order that sustains it.

The self-appointed community leader who brokers between police, traders and families, and whose own legitimacy rests on delivering calm. When the circus owner threatens armed retaliation, the Mayor's instinct is to hand over a child, exposing how his authority is preserved at the youngest residents' expense — and how quickly it evaporates once they stop consenting to it.