Originally planning to make Rififi the final film in my current Robert Hossein viewings,I suddenly spotted a Film Noir starring Hossein,which I had picked up ages ago and had forgotten about viewing!,which led to me getting ready to go on the heist.

The plot:

Since knowing each other in school,two school friends have been well aware of the different routes they have taken,with Kramer becoming a police officer,whilst his former pal has given himself the name "Dillinger" and has become the leading gangster in the country.Meeting Kramer for the first time in years, Dillinger decides to put an act on and pretend to Kramer that he will calm things down,as Dillinger and his gang set their sights on staging a heist at the border crossings.

View on the film:

Rolling out as a French/Italian co-production,co-writer/(along with Georges & André Tabet) director Sergio Gobbi and cinematographer Daniel Diot hoist the Italian Crime elements to the front. Despite my viewing options not being the best, (90% of the film dubbed in English,and the other 5% being in French with no subtitles! ) these obstacles were not able to block the bonkers delights offed by Gobbi,who spans the roads of France with ultra-stylised tracking shots of smash & grab attacks,which ropes in the random running over of pedestrians,and a baby being caught in the middle of a shoot-out.

Crashing into a sign marked "subtle",the screenplay by Gobbi and the Tabet's give the tough Film Noir gangsters a refreshing comedic bite,with Dillinger and his mob flying dry one liners with the bullets at the cops. Branded with the infamous US gangster name, Robert Hossein gives a terrific performance as Dillinger,thanks to Hossein rolling Dillinger with a menacing atmosphere over beating his former school pal Kramer in the heist.

This is aSergio Gobbi's product, as director, more or less the same DNA as LA PART DES LIONS, made one year later and produced by the latest and directed by Jean Larriaga, in which Robert Hossein and Charles Aznavour also played childhood friends. In LA PART, you also have Robert Hossein, Charles Aznavour and Albert Minski as a goon gangster role, not very talkative...This was the low scale crime flick of the seventies, the early seventies. This is fast paced, brutal, a bit run of the mill but powerful enough to grab you. Do not expect realism nor any comparison with Jean Pierre Melville' s cinema, or Robert Enrico, or Henri Verneuil, or Jose Giovanni. It is the level just below, but it's worth seeing for any French crime film buff. And I definitely am.