Description:
The classic meets the cool when dapper Jean Gabin teams up with smoldering matinee idol Alain Delon in Henri Verneuil's 1962 caper film Any Number Can Win. White-haired Gabin carries decades of French crime films with him as the career criminal who shuffles home from a five-year prison stretch and finds himself a stranger among the new high-rise apartments that have sprung up around his cozy old cottage. Aging delinquent Delon (who looks as if he stepped out of the road show of Grease under his slick hair and black leather jacket) becomes his unlikely partner in a scheme to knock off the richest casino on the Mediterranean c
The classic meets the cool when dapper Jean Gabin teams up with smoldering matinee idol Alain Delon in Henri Verneuil's 1962 caper film Any Number Can Win. White-haired Gabin carries decades of French crime films with him as the career criminal who shuffles home from a five-year prison stretch and finds himself a stranger among the new high-rise apartments that have sprung up around his cozy old cottage. Aging delinquent Delon (who looks as if he stepped out of the road show of Grease under his slick hair and black leather jacket) becomes his unlikely partner in a scheme to knock off the richest casino on the Mediterranean coast, the youthful brawn to Gabin's experience and calculation. Posing as rich high rollers, they scope out the joint, and Delon woos a leggy Swedish dancer in hot-blooded courtship, a shot of sex that slows the plot but provides its own small charms thanks to Verneuil's modern continental frankness and Delon's cocky charm. It's all part of the deliberate, precise groundwork laid for the heist, a masterfully realized sequence of calm, clean professionalism. The twist and the grueling tension are saved for the inspired denouement, a delicious set piece of ironic understatement. The swinging rock & roll score and handsome black-and-white widescreen photography are tasty flourishes to this tightly scripted, economically directed crime classic. --Sean Axmaker
One last heist for a lifetime! Charles has just been released after a five-year sentence and is determined to try an audacious theft before ending his dangerous career. He needs a young accomplice and finds him in Francis, an ex-con looking for a big score as well. Charles obtains the blueprints for a casino in Cannes from which he discovers a difficult, but possible way to gain access to the vault. Francis will have to crawl through an air conditioning duct and break into the elevator, which is the only way into the basement vault, holding up the cashier at exactly the right moment. The night of the heist arrives and everything works out as planned--almost.
... (more)
(less)
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
Release date: 29 February 2000
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0014381908428 UPC: 014381908428
My tags:
Add tags
Login
