Review of The Crook

On the loose again after escaping from prison, Tritignant, known as "the Swiss" for his precision and his habit of working alone (?) is a suave criminal who avoids capture and carries out a successful kidnapping (in which he does not at all work alone but has three or four accomplices). The film has a bright look and a pleasing sense of watching a smooth, gentlemanly crook at work, though there is never any sense of danger, and comparisons with Tarantino seem very wide of the mark. The action has momentum and charm, but things become a bit confusing due to oddly placed flashbacks. There is a focus on the role of publicity and media involvement in kidnappings, which allows the "crook" to successfully blackmail a bank for a million dollars, and features a gullible couple who give up their small boy because they think they've won a Simca car. We're suckered by ads, Lelouch is saying, and look what it can come to. Charles Denner of Elevator to the Scaffold and Life Inside Out/La vie à l'envers is effective and strange, if not real, as a minor bank official. A typical Lelouch touch is bookending the film with a musical film-within-the-film called "The Crook"/"Le Voyou" and it is all very amusing,stylish, and light. But somehow it leaves you flat, and the main event, the kidnapping, cheats the audience: we aren't told the setup.