When this film first began, I was pretty pleased. I loved the dialog and the look of the crooks (with trench coats and fedora hats)--it was almost like a late 40s-50s example of film noir but in color. It's obvious that director Melville was trying to copy, to an extent, this retro look and style.
If you are an American, the first thing you'll probably notice apart from some noir touches is that two of the gang members in this film are American actors whose lines are all dubbed into French. Richard Crenna and Michael Conrad (from "Hill Street Blues") have major parts in the film. This isn't super surprising as it was pretty common in Europe for studios to use American actors and dub their lines--especially in Italian films. My assumption is that the American actors' star power helped ticket sales, though in some of these cases the actors did NOT contribute well to the film. In some cases this is because the dubbing was done very poorly--fortunately, in this film it's pretty good.
The film consists of showing the crime and investigation from two alternating views--the crooks and the cop (Alain Delon). The film bounces back and forth quite often but manages to do this effectively. The caper is a bank robbery in which one of the gang members is shot. However, it's clear they are professionals and they've taken a lot of steps to cover their tracks and effectively hide the loot. Interestingly, however, there turn out to be a few twists. First, the initial robbery was not THE big score in the film--this would come later. Second, while the scene made little sense (why sneak into a hospital to kill a guy you could have killed much easier before YOU dropped him off at the hospital in the first place?!), it was an wild twist to see how the handled the gang member who was shot. This scene with the beautiful Catherine Deneuve was quite shocking...and effective. Third, Delon's role turns out to intersect with the gang in a way you might not expect.
Unfortunately, while the film is handled very well in most ways and shows how wonderfully you can make a film with such economy of language (there is VERY little dialog in the film), a major problem in the movie starts at the 53 minute point. The action switches to a train and you see one of the sloppiest uses of models I've seen since the last time I watched a Godzilla film! It looks just a kid's HO-gauge train set and a cheap helicopter model---which is exactly what they must be! Pretty sloppy. What also bothers me about this is that I noticed some score of 10 among the reviews. How can you give a film a 10 with such sloppy effects? I don't expect mega-million dollar effects, but this was just botched badly and looks bad...and a 10 would seem to imply perfection or at least near-perfection. Plus, plot-wise, don't you think someone on the train would have noticed a helicopter hovering just a few yards above the train for so long?! Fortunately, following these dumb scenes the film DID get better! Up until the silly scenes, I might have given this film a 9. However, considering how many scenes were done with crappy looking models, I think a fair overall score is 7 as it still held my interest. Pretty good and with a lot of potential to be a lot better--unfortunately, it's not among Melville's best though it turned out to be his last.
If you are an American, the first thing you'll probably notice apart from some noir touches is that two of the gang members in this film are American actors whose lines are all dubbed into French. Richard Crenna and Michael Conrad (from "Hill Street Blues") have major parts in the film. This isn't super surprising as it was pretty common in Europe for studios to use American actors and dub their lines--especially in Italian films. My assumption is that the American actors' star power helped ticket sales, though in some of these cases the actors did NOT contribute well to the film. In some cases this is because the dubbing was done very poorly--fortunately, in this film it's pretty good.
The film consists of showing the crime and investigation from two alternating views--the crooks and the cop (Alain Delon). The film bounces back and forth quite often but manages to do this effectively. The caper is a bank robbery in which one of the gang members is shot. However, it's clear they are professionals and they've taken a lot of steps to cover their tracks and effectively hide the loot. Interestingly, however, there turn out to be a few twists. First, the initial robbery was not THE big score in the film--this would come later. Second, while the scene made little sense (why sneak into a hospital to kill a guy you could have killed much easier before YOU dropped him off at the hospital in the first place?!), it was an wild twist to see how the handled the gang member who was shot. This scene with the beautiful Catherine Deneuve was quite shocking...and effective. Third, Delon's role turns out to intersect with the gang in a way you might not expect.
Unfortunately, while the film is handled very well in most ways and shows how wonderfully you can make a film with such economy of language (there is VERY little dialog in the film), a major problem in the movie starts at the 53 minute point. The action switches to a train and you see one of the sloppiest uses of models I've seen since the last time I watched a Godzilla film! It looks just a kid's HO-gauge train set and a cheap helicopter model---which is exactly what they must be! Pretty sloppy. What also bothers me about this is that I noticed some score of 10 among the reviews. How can you give a film a 10 with such sloppy effects? I don't expect mega-million dollar effects, but this was just botched badly and looks bad...and a 10 would seem to imply perfection or at least near-perfection. Plus, plot-wise, don't you think someone on the train would have noticed a helicopter hovering just a few yards above the train for so long?! Fortunately, following these dumb scenes the film DID get better! Up until the silly scenes, I might have given this film a 9. However, considering how many scenes were done with crappy looking models, I think a fair overall score is 7 as it still held my interest. Pretty good and with a lot of potential to be a lot better--unfortunately, it's not among Melville's best though it turned out to be his last.