Good concept, poorly executed.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Don't miss this one. Lightning fast, deviously clever, smart and stylish, and blazing with the vivid, hot colors of 1970s. The plot will grab you and, for a time, bewilder you. Once the pieces start to fit you realize what masterful hands you've been in for taking you through this fun-house hall of mirrors. This is that rare, wildly entertaining detective flick that most fans of the genre have yet to discover. Nine stars. Given its obscurity, and its subtitles, it's ripe for a first-rate remake. Hugh Jackman? Natalie Portman? Directed by Darren Aronofksy? Wow! What an exciting idea. Darren: Are you reading this. ;-)

A man escapes from prison and seeks the loot he had stashed away five years earlier. The middling narrative moves in fits and starts, with scenes unfolding at a leisurely pace. In particular, there's an elaborate kidnapping scene that plays out in such minute detail that it loses all momentum. The presentation is rather confusing. In fact, the flashback to the events of five years earlier is so clumsily handled that it takes a while for it to become clear that earlier events are being recounted. It opens with an extended prologue, a movie within the movie, that overstays its welcome. The same could be said of the film, which runs out of steam long before the end.

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.

Lelouche and Trintignant combine for a deft, lighter touch than their normal weighty collaborations. Full of wry touches, there is never a pause in the mind's contribution and nothing conventional to help you catch your breath. This is the kind of movie that you wish Hollywood could make but it never does, full of layers of complexity and wit, this mini-masterpiece improves with each repeated viewing.