Runtime: The version I saw was 119 minutes
Directed by: Henri Verneuil
Starring: Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, Irina Demick, Amedeo Nazzari
From: A few French/Italian companies
This was a quality podcast recommendation. In particular, it was the Pure Cinema Podcast and their Film Discoveries of 2021 (which featured Tarantino & Roger Avary) where someone brought it up and it was discussed for a few minutes. It is a heist/gangster movie and that intrigued. So did the cast of Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, and Lino Ventura.
The film starts off on a hot note-less than 10 minutes in, Delon (w/ assistance) escapes from a prison transport truck. The people that helped him escape, they execute a plan he has to steal a lot of jewels from a museum... only to discover that is an impossible task. Instead, there's the idea to steal them off of an airplane as they are transported to New York City. How can they possibly do it? Also, is it a mistake for Delon to start fooling around w/ the married daughter of the gang boss he's now associated with?
If you enjoy the old French crime movies like Rififi and Le Cercle Rouge... this isn't as great as those yet The Sicilian Clan is very good overall. I've also heard a comparison to Heat and again this isn't great as that... Besides the heist aspects, the intrigue with all the characters interacting w/ each other was always fascinating, along with the late 60's style and a pretty interesting Morricone score that at times as a Western sort of twang to it. The movie takes its time but at least for me it was never dull. Note that it was filmed in three different versions: English, French, and Italian. What I saw on Amazon was the English version... I'll presume the language is the only difference between the three.
No comments:
Post a Comment