Near the end of the political drama “Les Indésirables,” a precisely angled wide shot of a run-down apartment complex depicts the immigrant families that have inhabited it for many years throwing their most precious belongings over their balconies in a last-ditch effort to save them. Scores of virulent riot police have shown up to evict them without prior notice. Amid such extreme circumstances, it’s the unconditional solidarity between all of those surviving in this constantly dehumanized Parisian neighborhood that defines the chaotic scene.

It’s the rare instance when French director Ladj Ly allows the images to speak for themselves, rather than having one of his many characters instructively proclaim why we must care, in the second feature from the Oscar-nominated director of “Les Misérables.” Another impassioned statement against social and racial inequality, “Les Indésirables” feels no less urgent, and yet, the film stumbled at the French box office and has failed to attract much attention abroad. As Ly depicts hundreds of individual lives being lumped together in the shared tragedy of perpetual displacement, the magnitude of the cruelty at play astounds.

The project continues the activist messaging of “Les Misérables” and artistic collaborator Romain Gavras’ “Athena” (which Ly co-wrote), both of which dealt with how disenfranchised communities react to incessant police brutality with a matching fury. “Les Indésirables” takes a similar premise, centering marginalized, mostly immigrant people (and their French-born children) facing constant institutional violence to unfurl the inner workings of how those systems of oppression are set in place through an ouroboros of white bureaucracy. Here, their access to housing is at risk.

But for all the propulsive cinematic energy packed into this trio of social justice-driven ensemble pieces, they all suffer from contrived screenplays that forcefully engineer powder-keg situations to bluntly over-explain their unquestionably imperative themes. Emotionally heavy-handed throughout, the writing in “Les Indésirables” propels its righteous discourse to the foreground with zero intent to leave space for subtext.

On the people’s side, there are conflicting approaches regarding how to effectively fight back. There’s Haby (Anta Diaw), an involved local young woman confident that her work helping families find homes and engaging them politically will yield results. Diaw’s often catatonic expression communicates both rage and resolute purposefulness. Her close friend Blaz (Aristote Luyindula) scoffs at peaceful protests. The humiliating over-policing this low-income area is subjected to has led him to hold an understandably defeatist attitude.

To their credit, Ly and his co-writer Giordano Gederlini, don’t oversimplify the solution to the housing issue. The government intends to demolish the buildings in disrepair and start from the ground up, but their plans to relocate the residents don’t consider their specific needs (such as the size of each family) and aims for a blanket gentrifying fix.

Pierre (Alexis Manenti), a white pediatrician newly appointed interim major of this suburb, quickly realizes the impossibility of appeasing every concern, of fulfilling every demand while working within a system designed to delay and move the needle at a glacial pace, less with the wellbeing of the majority in mind than the goal of preserving a sense of “order.” When Haby tries to defy his power and run for mayor, Pierre weaponizes the institutions. That Pierre invites Christian Syrian refugee Tania (Judy Al Rashi) and her father to have Christmas dinner with his family makes evident (maybe too overtly) the selective treatment of those perceived as foreigners, depending on race and religion.

The most fascinating character in “Les Indésirables,” however, is Roger (Steve Tientcheu), the Black deputy major and Pierre’s second in command. The son of African immigrants who grew up in these parts, he has now taken on the conservative ideology that people shouldn’t rely on “handouts.” Roger exists at the intersection between the Haves and the Have Nots, but chooses to align with whiteness to preserve his position of power.

Though scarce, there are other moments where Ly succeeds at visual storytelling. In the opening scene, a coffin holding the body of a deceased Muslim woman has to be strenuously carried from a high-up unit in this apartment complex down several flights of dark stairs by her male neighbors. There’s no elevator and only partial electricity. Ly lets the entire sequence play out practically in real time, encapsulating how even at their most vulnerable, these families are denied a modicum of dignity.

The ordeal calls to mind the final scenes in “Les Misérables,’ which maximize tensions based on the claustrophobia of tight spaces in crowded structures. Both are the work of cinematographer Julien Poupard. Less intellectually effective is Ly’s use of montages to illustrate parallels between Haby and Pierre, because they create a false equivalency between their plights. There’s also the conspicuous inclusion of fire as symbol.

The final minutes, when a wrathful Blaz decides to take matters into his own hands, lean even further into the on-the-nose notion of fighting fire with fire and the perils of “an eye for an eye”-style justice making for a conclusion unconcerned with the many loose ends it ignores. Ly’s projects belong to the same group of French films focused on the unseen segments of society (cinéma de banlieue) as Mathieu Kassovitz’s now seminal “La Haine,” but their lack of narrative finesse exposes them up to unfavorable comparisons.