Rififi

Pros: Strong story, great heist scene, fine performances, moody noir feel and Montmartre atmosphere
Cons: Black-and-white, subtitles (if either is an issue for you)

So, boys and girls, you like those caper thrillers such as The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Entrapment (1999) and Mission Impossible I (1996) and II (2000). Well, you can pretty much thank that old pinko Jules Dassin for ...

Pros: As good as cinema gets.
Cons: Absolutely nothing.

Friggin’ Rififi, man. If I was directing films for a living (like I wish I was), Rififi would serve as one of my greatest influences. Spielberg says he watches The Searchers before directing every film. Rififi would probably...

Pros: A sparkling restoration of a tough, exciting, suspenseful, moving French Noir.
Cons: RIFIFI is sometimes dismissed (unfairly) as a "trick" movie.

Just re-released in art houses, restored by Rialto Pictures, with new colloquial subtitles, Jules Dassin's 1955 RIFIFI is truly electrifying. Dismissed for years as a gimmick film in the canon of a director in decline, RIFIFI 2000 (as it is billed now) ...

Pros: Suspense, style, originality
Cons: Some might find it hard to like any of the characters; they're too "rififi"

“Rififi,” as the movie of the same name tells us, is a word that has no real definition. For certain, it is closely associated with toughness; a comparable modern term might be “hardcore.” Whatever its translation, it is a word with which the main ...

Pros: Great script, great acting, great moral ambiguity
Cons: Why can't all movies be this good?

It didn't really work in Cast Away, but director Jules Dassin manages to pull it off in his masterpiece, Rififi: silence. It fills the screen for a half-hour in the pivotal scene of this 1955 film.

Four master criminals pool their experience...