"Le Casse" is a simple, straightforward story about a crook named Azad (Jean Paul Belmondo), whose gang stole emeralds worth $1 million. While waiting for their boat to leave Athens, they hid the jewels, and try to escape from the schemes of a unscrupulous cop, Zacharias (Omar Sharif).

This movie is another example of the brilliant collaboration between the underrated Henri Verneuil ("Un singe en hiver", "100,000 dollars au soleil", "Peur sur la ville") and Belmondo. They share an honest love for such movie treats as car chases, evil bad guys, anti-heroes, slight eroticism, exotic food, humor and Bond-like misogyny. Which this movie contains galore. And it's also one of the first times when Belmondo performs his famous stunts, without any wires or stunt doubles. One scene in particular shows the "hero" being hidden in a dump-truck, which discharge its payload (including Belmondo) on a slope going down to a mine. You can actually see Belmondo stumble down the slope among debris and rocks and once down the slope stand up, dust off his trousers and walk away. In a single shot. Like Jackie Chan or Colt Seavers. And the movie contains a lot of great 70's milestones, like an almost silent intro showing the theft of the emeralds, or a spectacular car chase in the streets of Athens.

All in all, a very entertaining piece of 70's French cinema.

¨The burglars¨ is a good French movie about hold-up with top-notch actors . Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a delinquent who along with a motley group (Robert Hossein , Renato Salvatori and his girlfriend played by Nicole Calfan) plans a robbing . Azad pretends the perfect robbery recruiting his expert accomplices but a Police Inspector named Amed Zacharia (Omar Shariff) tracks down on them . The hold-up is carefully schemed on the Tasco(Jose Luis Villalonga)'s home .The morning after newspapers publicize ¨Tasco robbed of 1.000.000 in emeralds¨. Meanwhile Azad falls in love with a gorgeous woman (Dyan Cannon). But the bad luck and the corrupt Zacharia does the crime gone awry.

This heist movie packs thrills, emotion, exciting burglary, extraordinary performances , spectacular car chases, and a moving finale . Sensational acting by two big star names, Jean Paul Belmondo and Omar Shariff. Belmondo steals the show , as he runs , bound and leaps ; such as Jackie Chan , he jumps over buses , cars and makes his own stunts . Strong secondary cast as Robert Hossein , Renato Salvatori , Jose Luis Villalonga , among others. Interesting and thrilling screenplay based on a novel by David Goodis , whose books have been frequently adapted on cinema as ¨Street of no return, Shoot the piano player and Dark passage¨ . Atmospheric cinematography by Claude Renoir , though is necessary an urgent remastering . Nice musical score with catching leitmotif composed by the maestro Ennio Morricone and conducted by Bruno Nicolai.

The picture is professionally directed by Henry Verneuil, a Turkish director working in France from the 40s. Although not a director of great reputation among the critics, his movies have almost all been aimed squarely at the commercial market. Verneuil is an expert on heist-genre such as he proved in ¨The Sicilians clan(68)¨ and ¨Melodie in soul soul¨, both of them with with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, furthermore on Warlike genre : ¨Weekend at Dunkirk¨and ¨The 25th hour¨and even directed one Western : Guns of San Sebastian(68)¨. He seemed to have dropped out of the film-making after 1976, but in 1981 unexpectedly reappeared with yet another of his caper film : ¨Thousand millions of dollars¨. Rating : Acceptable and passable, a must see for French cinema lovers and Belmond and Shariff fans.

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...