José Giovanni
Gu, a famous gangster, has just escaped from jail. All french police is after him. Before leaving the country with Manouche, the woman he loves, Gu needs a final job to get some money. The job works, but a police's scheming makes Gu appear as a traitor to his own accomplices. Gu will do whatever it takes to clean his honor...
Novelist and filmmaker Jose Giovanni turned to the remarkable true story of how his father helped him escape a date with the guillotine for this drama, which is based closely on events from his own life. During World War II, Manu (Vincent Lecoeur, as a character Giovanni modeled after himself) fought with the French Resistance, but near the end of the war he fell into a life of crime, and in 1947, 22-year-old Manu was arrested for his part in a bungled robbery that left a man dead. While Manu did not pull the fatal trigger, he refuses to say who did, since it would mean implicating his uncle, one of the few members of his family who has stood by him; Manu's brother is dead, and he turned his back on his father Joe (Bruno Cremer) years ago. Manu is sentenced to death, and while he protests his innocence, his attempts to escape from prison do little to convince anyone that he's telling the truth.
A mountain climber devises a plan to eliminate the tyrannical husband of a young Vietnamese woman with whom he has fallen in love.
A man who enrolled in the German police attempts to redeem himself after the end of World War II.
The adventures of a group of friends who plan to recover crates full of gold from a fall in Canada.
The "black robe" in the title of this suspense film belongs to a female lawyer, Florence Nat (Annie Girardot) who has just lost a case in which she defended Simon Risler (Claude Brasseur), a man wrongly accused of murder. Risler escapes before he can be put in prison, and seeks help from attorney Nat in finding the real killer, partly by going after the police inspector who framed him in the first place. A retired surgeon, in the process of setting up a drug rehab clinic gets involved in solving Risler's case, and soon the solution seems to be pointing to high-ranking figures with every desire and ample means to keep the truth well-hidden.
In July of 1976, the Societé Générale of France was robbed of well over $10 million dollars by a group burrowing through the sewers of Paris. This movie is based on a book by the thieves' mastermind, Albert Spaggiari. The famous theft won the nickname, "the great drain robbery," and this romanticized cinematic retelling of the true story stars Francis Huster as Spaggiari.
Hugo Sennart is a French Gypsy, wanted by the police for theft. The same inspector who's searching for him is also looking for a jewel thief, Yan Kuq, whose wife has died under suspicious circumstance just after a major burglary. The Gypsy needs to settle a few scores and make one more heist before going to ground, and, by coincidence, his path takes him close to Yan, who's hiding in the hotel of a close friend and former lover, Ninie. The Gypsy lives by a code of honor, which puts him at risk on occasion; and he despises those who treat his people as worse than dogs. The police close in. Is there honor among thieves?
A former bank robber is released after 10 years in prison. He gets help from a social-worker, but gets harassed by an old cop from his past.
For more than 15 years, two Marseille friends and criminals battle the law, rival gangs, prison authorities and even mined beaches in order to survive.
Tom is a secretary for an association which aims to free political prisoners. Skipping from inaction he plans and kills dictator Anton Caras. Arrested he ends up in a jail full of political prisoners for whose freedom he had been working. Eventually he manages to escape but only one would follow him. The others preferred to stay and testify before the court.
Marceau Léonetti (Lino Ventura), a competent and energetic officer stops by chance the son of an influential lawyer driving under the influence of alcohol. A few months later, the lawyer falsely accuses Léonetti as being violent and incompetent. As a result Marceau is transferred to a small police station, where he meets young and beautiful Jeanne (Marlène Jobert). Soon they are faced with a tough investigation.
Roger Santet is a convicted murderer sprung from prison by the Sicilian clan headed by the aging Vittorio Manalese. They conspire to steal a large cache of jewels from an exhibit in Rome. As they are preparing for the heist, the mobster's American friend Tony Nicosia suggests that a better way to get the rocks would be to hijack the transport plane while it is en route to New York. The dogged inspector Le Goff is using all the available resources to thwart their plans. Though the heist itself is successful, Santet finds himself trapped by the mob because of his fling with Manalese's daughter-in-law
In 1960, Stan, the protagonist, after having made a fortune in Asia, returns to Corsica, to visit a friend's tomb. In Ajaccio, he meets Helene, who she rescues from her kidnappers, who take advantage of her "charms" in a house of ill reputation. They hide then somewhere in the mountains, where they are pursued by the Corsican mobsters...
Two adventurers and best friends, Roland and Manu, are the victims of a practical joke that costs Manu his pilot's license. With seeming contrition, the jokesters tell Roland and Manu about a crashed plane lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Congo stuffed with riches. The adventurers set off to find the loot.
A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.
Hector Valentin (Bourvil) returns to France from Canada when he inherits a small sawmill. He has difficulties restarting the run-down operation which has inefficient workers and is hampered by the dirty tactics of its bigger...
A band of gangster devises a plan to steal a game contested between two drug gangs of drug traffickers: the five fraudsters will face bigger problems than them.
Van Hekken, an old gangster, arrives in Tokyo to direct a bank hold-up in order to get a very valuable diamond.
Roberto goes to Marseilles to give a hand to his friend Xavier, wrongly imprisoned following a frame-up organized by his associate Villanova. Roberto sets out to seduce Villanova's mistress, but when Villanova is killed, Roberto ends up leader of the band...
On crowded Milan streets, two men execute a split-second payroll heist-in broad daylight-then begin a lightning-paced getaway, via every conveyance available. But after all, when a tough guy's returning to France (where he's been sentenced to death in absentia) after holing up in Italy for nearly a decade, he's got to have some startup money--particularly if he's going back with the wife and kids.
Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system -- yet their escape is anything but assured.
