Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Charming and brutal

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An exceptionally entertaining film set in Marseilles during the 1920s. Two local trouble-makers (Alain Delon & Jean Paul Belmondo) team up to try and usurp the local city bosses and run into one roadblock after another. At turns comic and violent, director Jacques Deray and scriptwriters Claude Sautet and Jean-Claude Carrière create a film heavy on atmosphere and full of very colorful characters. Delon & Belmondo have a lot of chemistry and the supporting cast is populated with the likes of Michel Bouquet, Catherine Rouvel and André Bollet (excellent as a particularly nasty crime lord). The sunny cinematography is by Jean-Jacques Tarbès and the bouncy music score is by none other than Claude Bolling.

... as they say in France when they find something excellent. In one sense this is a natural successor to the gangster/buddy movies that paired Jean Gabin with Lino Ventura in the fifties but with a tad of English for good measure. It's a Marseilles that Marcel Pagnol chose to ignore, a city filled with hookers, pimps, and gangsters rather than Frank Capra salts of the earth, a city in which - at the time it was set - a nine-year old Yves Montand was growing up and it's a nice touch to throw in a mention of the Alcazar, the Music Hall where Montand played in his first years in the business. Beginning as petty crooks and rivals coming to blows over a woman Delon and Belmondo not only bond but join forces and gradually rise through the ranks until they are running organised crime in the city. It's a fine blend of drama and comedy with a 'Sting' type theme tune that puts one in mind of Newman and Redford, another great team. Well worth seeking out.

I watched this movie for the first time when i was 15 and continue watching it today,this movie is timeless, i was already familiar with Alain Delon and most of the works by Jean-Paul Belmondo,the two actors are phenomenal by themselves and were electrifying together in this movie.I find no fault in this representation of french mobsters in the 30's, and further feel that this movies should have received similar praise to movies such as our more recent "the Godfather".The movie starts off in a french Bistro with François Capella(Belmondo)shooting pool, and a lady sitting at the bar, Roch Siffredi(Delon)storms in and request the lady(Lola) to leave with him, and this results in a fist fight between Capella and Siffredi, and the movie catapults from their first meeting.The movie is well shot even by todays standards, the story is quite complete and will not leave questioning much once it is over. if you can get hold of it, it is definitely worth watching.

When a movie pairs Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo, casting them as initially small-time crooks who work their way up the underworld ladder in 30's France, I think we have a right to expect something better than this. Pedestrian direction and a script that manages to be both dull and rushed make for a pretty unexciting movie. The stars are as charismatic as ever, but that isn't enough. (**)