PimpinAinttEasy
Dear Henry Verneuil, here is what you got right in Le Casse - The procedural safe cracking scene at the beginning was heart stopping. I liked the props used by Belmondo to crack the safe. The whole thing was meticulous, elaborate and well thought out. You were a bit of hack who was obviously inspired by the films of Jules Dassin and Jean Pierre Melville in capturing the minute details of a heist. The film also had one of the best car chases of all time. It is a really long and vicious car chase comparable to the ones in Bullit and French Connection. The score by Ennio Morricone was one of his best for a crime film (yes, even better than the ones he composed for Sicilian Clan and Revolver)and I liked the title sequence. The score was packed with some remarkable tunes. You had two great actors in Belmondo and Shariff pitted against each other. And some beautiful women who were to be used or slapped around by the men. Frankly, just like The Sicialian Clan, Le Casse had all the ingredients for a great crime flick.But here is what you got wrong - after a terrific first half, the film's second half was meandering and goofy. The plot developments were uninspired and preposterous (not in a good way). You tried to hide the lack of substance in the script with some stylish visuals and overuse of Morricone's score. Too much space was given to the two female leads who were nothing more than props in the first half. The cat and mouse relationship between Belmondo and Shariff was the most interesting part of the film. The women should have been in the background. Their characters were nothing more than bimbos. Also, the thrills and action scenes in the film's second half were markedly inferior to the ones in the first half.Like the final scene where Belmondo muses about the types of chicken dishes he has had, you wasted the diamonds which you had at hand. It was a great opportunity to craft another commercial crime classic like The Sicilian Clan, Henri. But instead you made a film that was only half good. Best Regards, Pimpin.(6/10)
hnpsara
I remember the filming of this movie in 1971. Not many foreign movies were filmed in Athens, so this one attracted quite a bit of attention. I particularly remember the chase scene with the yellow trolley bus outside the Athens Hilton. The scene only takes a few seconds in the movie, but it took about a week to film, with the trolley bus immobilized in front of a busy traffic intersection, causing massive traffic jams! Re. the wild car chase: for someone living in Athens, the scene sequences are illogical, jumping instantaneously from one neighborhood of the Athens-Piraeus metro area to another, located even as much as 15 km away! But the net effect on film is great, perhaps even as great as the 'Bullitt' car chase.
Squeele
"Le Casse" is a simple, straightforward story about a crook named Azad (Jean Paul Belmondo), whose gang stole emeralds worth $1 million. While waiting for their boat to leave Athens, they hid the jewels, and try to escape from the schemes of a unscrupulous cop, Zacharias (Omar Sharif).This movie is another example of the brilliant collaboration between the underrated Henri Verneuil ("Un singe en hiver", "100,000 dollars au soleil", "Peur sur la ville") and Belmondo. They share an honest love for such movie treats as car chases, evil bad guys, anti-heroes, slight eroticism, exotic food, humor and Bond-like misogyny. Which this movie contains galore. And it's also one of the first times when Belmondo performs his famous stunts, without any wires or stunt doubles. One scene in particular shows the "hero" being hidden in a dump-truck, which discharge its payload (including Belmondo) on a slope going down to a mine. You can actually see Belmondo stumble down the slope among debris and rocks and once down the slope stand up, dust off his trousers and walk away. In a single shot. Like Jackie Chan or Colt Seavers. And the movie contains a lot of great 70's milestones, like an almost silent intro showing the theft of the emeralds, or a spectacular car chase in the streets of Athens.All in all, a very entertaining piece of 70's French cinema.
Nazi_Fighter_David
Since 'Bullitt' and 'The French Connection', car chases have become almost obligatory in the gangster films... In 'The Burglars,' Omar Sharif drives a Fiat in hot pursuit of Belmondo through apparently Athens' busy streets, up and down flights of steps, across pavements, anywhere and everywhere; it's great fun, but it holds up the plot for some time of the film and has no real bearing on the story... It appears to have been included only for the purpose of introducing an auto-chase, because when Sharif finally catches up with Belmondo's damaged car, the pair exchange a few words and drive away... Apart from this failure to further the plot, the chase is very well done indeed, and at times the wildly spinning cars almost seem to be part of an automobile ballet...Omar Sharif an unlikely choice for a tough policeman plays the part of an Istanbul detective turned crooked... He discovers a plot to carry out a big robbery and at once sees his chance to cut himself in for a slice of the cake... Whether he was determined before is never been evident, but from the moment he decides to blackmail the villains for a good part of money, he becomes a one-man tornado... There is a scene where he orders his police escort to remain behind while he investigates a cellar alone... The crooks are there all right, but it is not his intention to capture them... He just means to force them to pay up... In cold blood, he shoots one of the gang to prove his point...France has produced many good screen actors Alain Delon and Jean Gabin, the solid, heavyweight gangster, are two who have become famous... Jean-Paul Belmondo is in a different category... He is tough, he fights hard, and he is a mixture of hero and villain... In 'The Burglars,' he is certainly crooked, definitely a bit of a hoodlum, yet one cannot help liking him... There's a good deal of the Douglas Fairbanks athlete-type in Belmondo, and this can be seen in the film, particularly in the sequence in which he jumps from buses to cars and back again while being chased by Sharif...
AD
