Dark, dreary Paris; in this film a shower of deep shades of black and grey. A notorious, immoral underworld of doom and gloom, and inevitably death (and with it, failure). The perfect heist does not exist, the minute details, the promise of glory and riches unknown to the common man (and its seeming immortality) are all illusions. We know it, the crooks know it, but somehow they still search and try their hand, always coming up with a bitter fate. The best heist scene ever.
Servais' Stephanois is the heart of this film. His gritty charisma guides a group of thieves through a taut heist that is depicted in an engaging thirty minutes of silence. However, one small mistake cascades into a waterfall of human frailty, which ultimately undoes the entire gang. The mood of the film is entrancing, and the soundtrack fits the setting like a glove. The denouement is a bit weaker than the heist itself, as the mistakes they make seem a little too contrived.
Rififi is a dark and moody movie. The characters, the city, the way silence is used all help make the atmosphere in Rififi wonderfully dark and gritty.
Very good heist film with an excellent cast, great style, and some remarkable sequences. The final portion followed formula a little too closely, but for the most part this was an excellent movie offering a very human portrayal of the criminal world.
For every piece of this that's aged poorly, there's another that's striking in its vitality. The "simplicity" of the heist just heightens the tension and focus of the job, while the initial nonchalance of the criminal partnership quickly shatters, and plain domesticity becomes consuming. Tony's violent misanthropy finally finds answers, in a swell of repressed, desperate feeling, in the glorious and wild closing sequence.
One of the two best heist movies along with Heat I have ever seen only this one was engineered in 1955. Sadly the heist movies of today are all flawed and depend mostly on jumping thru the laser lines in the vault room or overriding voice recognition coded, finger print coded security systems and a lame love story.
The heist directots of today who can't understand why they fail to build proper tension and emotion despite such scenes, should study Rififi first.
The half-hour long, wordless heist scene at the centre of the film is astonishing and absolutely riveting stuff. I know the ending is also highly praised by some though I found it overblown and even contrived compared to what preceded it. Still, most of the stuff surrounding the heist is well handled and even on its own the heist itself is enough to make the film rather special.
It's great to see a heist film where the robbery isn't the only shining moment. That's not to say that the second act's heist isn't brilliant -- it's an absolute thrill that appears to have established tradition of crime film since. But the third act is just as, if not more, tense, and the film concludes at it's absolute best. Starting at good and steadily building into fantastic, there's no wonder why this film has had such a vast influence on the genre.
A really great crime flick full of the sort of little moments at which cinephiles endlessly gawk. Slightly outdone these days by the plot's familiar beats, but sequences like the silent robbery and the ending car ride more than make up for it.
one or two mixed bag elements, the ending was especially iffy. my biggest gripes are a couple things that make no logical sense, making plans over the phone while never really actually giving a where or when, and a mother pulling her child out of a crashed car while leaving her dying brother-in-law there without a second thought. the actual lead up to and heist it's self are utterly awesome. good watch, not to be ignored.
Loading Products from Amazon and Ebay
Privacy Policy |
Abuse Policy |
Contact |
About Us |
APIs |
Advertising & Press |
RSS