Attention bandits! (1986)
Directed by Claude Lelouch

Film Review

By the mid-1980s, the policier was starting to go out of fashion in France, but this did not deter director Claude Lelouch from offering his typically boisterous take on this familiar genre.  With its tongue wedged firmly in its cheek, Attention bandits! makes repeated references to French cinema's affinity for the crime-thriller film, whilst visibly lamenting the passing of the genre's biggest asset, Jean Gabin. Perhaps the post-modern wit is carried a bit too far in places - the prison escape sequence would not be out of place in an out-and-out farce - but it does provide the spectator with some unexpected fun.  In fact, it is probably the film's comic touches which save the film; without these, it would be just another tired 1980s crime drama.

Jean Yanne's very creditable performance - combining the brutality of a hardened criminal with the tenderness of a loving father - is the other thing which works to the film's advantage, compensating for the somewhat lacklustre contributions from his co-stars, Patrick Bruel and Marie-Sophie L. (the director's wife).  In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that the narrative crawls to a snail's pace in a few places, Attention bandits is a better homage to the classic French polar than you might expect. Compared with many of Lelouch's other cinematic offerings of the 1980s - such as the hideously overblown Les Uns et les autres (1981) and over-sentimental Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté (1988) - Attention bandits! is an enjoyable romp of the kind not seen since the director's deliriously funny L'Aventure, c'est l'aventure (1972).

Film Synopsis

One-time crook Simon Verini decides to come out of retirement when Mozart, the leader of a gang of jewel thieves, offers to put some business his way.  Verini is busy looking for a buyer for Mozart's stolen jewels in Holland when his wife is abducted and held to ransom.  Verini hands over the jewels to the kidnapper, but his wife is shot dead as he looks on.  He is then arrested and sent to prison for the jewel theft.  Before he is taken into custody, he manages to get his daughter Marie-Sophie into a high class boarding school in Switzerland.  On his release from prison ten years later, Verini is reunited with his now grown-up daughter and embarks on a hunt to find his wife's killer.  No sooner as he had his revenge than he is arrested again.  Mozart makes a pact with Marie-Sophie - he will get her father out of prison if she will agree to marry him...