Les caïds

Director Robert Enrico's gripping, twist-laden French 70s crime drama remains a thrillingly vivid exemplar of Gallic crime noir. Much like a refined vintage cognac, a great number of these enigmatic 70s French crime thrillers improve with age! This hard-boiled yarn successfully maintains a palpable tension all the way until its pulse-quickening climax. Including the compelling performances, and Roubaix's idiosyncratic score, I thought the shadow-steeped photography was excellent, and the talented director did a terrific job with the nervy heist itself. I admire doomy, existential crime thrillers, wherein the onus is on substance, rather than style, and grit, rather than quick to tarnish veneer. Avid petrol heads might care to note that legendary automotive daredevil Rémy Julienne provides the expert vehicular thrill-spillage. François de Roubaix's memorable themes complement the page-turning plot, earthy performances, and zesty action, with sublime elfin beauty Juliet Berto's sex appeal being a veritable force of nature! Robert Enrico's electric 'Les caïds' is a muscular, downbeat, briskly told, outstandingly well-made 70s policier that readily rewards repeated viewing.

This is Robert Enrico 's worst film by such a wide margin it's hard to believe that director made very good works, "les aventuriers" ,"les grandes gueules" ,let alone "au coeur de la vie" ,one segment of which "incident at owl creek bridge" is world-wide known .

This is a disjointed screenplay , a cock and bull story which ends like a poor man's 'Bonnie and Clyde" , with would be poetic slow-motion pictures to boot.

Implausibilities begin from the first scene :a young man kills his fickle lover and her new beau ;there are plenty of witnesses in the restaurant , but no one call the police who later on do not seem to search the murderer who could be identified easily though .Then it's pure run-of-the-mill gangsters story: bank break in, escape from jail (they free all the prisoners ,including women ,which spawns an orgy ) ,informers , all the clichés in a disaster which crosses all generic boundaries ;there's also a stuntmen's show -in which friendly faces appear , in order to give the movie a fantasy nuance- ,pure filler.

With actors such as Serge Reggiani -already present in the highly superior "les aventuriers " in a supporting role- and Patrick Bouchitey (extremely bad directed) there could have been an interesting son/surrogate dad relationship .And Juliet Berto ,a cerebral actress does not belong here. For once,even François De Roubaix's score is subpar.An unfriendly look at the -probably gay- accomplice makes the movie even more obnoxious.

It's not enough to have good actors, you got to have also an excellent script for the good movie to come out. Michel Constantin and Jean Bouise are worthy of watching in anything, just by their simple presence, they have charm and naturalness. Serge Reggiani is, in my humble opinion, in his best role. But the rest, that is, the whole story, is incredible, long, boring. Juliet Berto, although natural in everything she does, is from a completely different film, together with Patrick Bouchitey, who, in his first role in a film, is downright annoying. The usual exceptional music of François de Roubaix (a kind of French Morricone) does not save anything. Robert Enrico has some very good films under his belt and even this one had potential, if he had changed a lot of things.

Patrick Bouchitey murders his wife and lover. He takes refuge with Serge Reggiani. Regianni and his partner, Jean Bouise, work for a stunt driving company. In between those gigs, they rob banks. Bouise has a daughter, Juliet Berto. She and Bouchitey fall in love. Meanwhile, a bank job that Regianni and Bouise are on goes bad. Bouise dies, Regianni, Bouchitey, and Mlle Berto go on the run, with a mix of sympathetic crooks and betrayal on their paths.

It's the far end of the moral crooks of Auguste Le Breton and Jean-Pierre Melville. While students are rioting for justice, ordinary decent crooks can't catch a break in this movie that suggests a lot of other movies. Will any of them get away and land in the land of dream-time, Australia?