The Burglars (1972)

Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Dear Henry Verneuil, here is what you got right in Le Casse - The procedural safe cracking scene at the beginning was heart stopping. I liked the props used by Belmondo to crack the safe. The whole thing was meticulous, elaborate and well thought out. You were a bit of hack who was obviously inspired by the films of Jules Dassin and Jean Pierre Melville in capturing the minute details of a heist. The film also had one of the best car chases of all time. It is a really long and vicious car chase comparable to the ones in Bullit and French Connection. The score by Ennio Morricone was one of his best for a crime film (yes, even better than the ones he composed for Sicilian Clan and Revolver)and I liked the title sequence. The score was packed with some remarkable tunes. You had two great actors in Belmondo and Shariff pitted against each other. And some beautiful women who were to be used or slapped around by the men. Frankly, just like The Sicialian Clan, Le Casse had all the ingredients for a great crime flick.But here is what you got wrong - after a terrific first half, the film's second half was meandering and goofy. The plot developments were uninspired and preposterous (not in a good way). You tried to hide the lack of substance in the script with some stylish visuals and overuse of Morricone's score. Too much space was given to the two female leads who were nothing more than props in the first half. The cat and mouse relationship between Belmondo and Shariff was the most interesting part of the film. The women should have been in the background. Their characters were nothing more than bimbos. Also, the thrills and action scenes in the film's second half were markedly inferior to the ones in the first half.Like the final scene where Belmondo muses about the types of chicken dishes he has had, you wasted the diamonds which you had at hand. It was a great opportunity to craft another commercial crime classic like The Sicilian Clan, Henri. But instead you made a film that was only half good. Best Regards, Pimpin.(6/10)

The Burglars is a good entertaining movie to watch during leisure hours. The futile but reckless car chase sequence is compelling and Belmondo vs Omar Shariff is an exciting combination.Inspite of all the coercion and blackmailing by Zacharia (played by Shariff), the scoundrel played by Belmondo manages to escape at the end and the cop had to grapple in a heap of wheat flow in a silos tank. The theme music produced by Ennio Morricone has a subtle and beguiling tinge of danger and suspense.This movie is a much better entertainment than watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "The Mummy" or the recent "2012 end of the world" which can only be enjoyed by people sporting puerile imagination and fictional taste. A show of death and destruction, creepy images and fiction superimposed by computer animation and special effects does not correspond to good movie making.

I don't remember much of the film except for 2 events. One was Omar Sharif playing a game with one of the crooks. He had a glass of booze in his hand and stated to the crook that the more he drinks the worse his aim gets and every time he drank, his shots came closer to the crook. The crook gets away; however, he is wounded in the shoulder.I love the ending where Omar gets the gems; however, he is caught in a silo where grain is falling on top of him and in the end, only one of his hands with the gems is above the grain while the rest of his body is buried.The film is one of the unknown films that I did not known that Omar Sharif had made apart from Genghsis Khan, Lawrence of Arabia, The Far Palivion, and Night of the Generals.

Since 'Bullitt' and 'The French Connection', car chases have become almost obligatory in the gangster films... In 'The Burglars,' Omar Sharif drives a Fiat in hot pursuit of Belmondo through apparently Athens' busy streets, up and down flights of steps, across pavements, anywhere and everywhere; it's great fun, but it holds up the plot for some time of the film and has no real bearing on the story... It appears to have been included only for the purpose of introducing an auto-chase, because when Sharif finally catches up with Belmondo's damaged car, the pair exchange a few words and drive away... Apart from this failure to further the plot, the chase is very well done indeed, and at times the wildly spinning cars almost seem to be part of an automobile ballet...Omar Sharif – an unlikely choice for a tough policeman – plays the part of an Istanbul detective turned crooked... He discovers a plot to carry out a big robbery and at once sees his chance to cut himself in for a slice of the cake... Whether he was determined before is never been evident, but from the moment he decides to blackmail the villains for a good part of money, he becomes a one-man tornado... There is a scene where he orders his police escort to remain behind while he investigates a cellar alone... The crooks are there all right, but it is not his intention to capture them... He just means to force them to pay up... In cold blood, he shoots one of the gang to prove his point...France has produced many good screen actors – Alain Delon and Jean Gabin, the solid, heavyweight gangster, are two who have become famous... Jean-Paul Belmondo is in a different category... He is tough, he fights hard, and he is a mixture of hero and villain... In 'The Burglars,' he is certainly crooked, definitely a bit of a hoodlum, yet one cannot help liking him... There's a good deal of the Douglas Fairbanks athlete-type in Belmondo, and this can be seen in the film, particularly in the sequence in which he jumps from buses to cars and back again while being chased by Sharif...