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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

You won't be disappointed!

Wow! Such a good movie.

To me, this movie is perfection.

Dear French Filmmakers, why do you always have to infuse your misanthropy, fatalism and melancholia into romantic expressions of the American identity like the gangster? In The Big Risk, the director guy Claude Sautet entertains the hell out of us with a pulsating heist scene, a thrilling car and bike chase through the French countryside, another action sequence on a boat and a shootout on the seashores of an island. But this is all over in the first twenty minutes of the film. The rest of the film is about the dreary, sad and mundane life of a gangster on the run. His fear for the future of his kids and the betrayal by his old gangster friends who are all worse than the worst of squares could be from the life of any ordinary man. The final scene where Lino Ventura walks across a crowded street - a completely inconsequential man who bumps into other inconsequential men is pretty grim. There is no epic romantic death like Dix Handley in The Asphalt Jungle for this French gangster. As he walks away, a voice over informs us that a week later, this person is captured, sentenced and executed. Very original. But also very grim. Best Regards, Pimpin. (8/10)

Both Bresson and Melville are reputed to be big fans of "Classe Tous Risques" and it's easy to see why; either man could have directed this classic French gangster picture. The actual director was Claude Sautet and it's one of the greatest second films in movie history, (in the 15 year period between 1956 and 1970 Sautet made only 4 films). He made this one in 1960 around the time of the New Wave and while it's more traditional than something Godard or Truffaut might have done, nevertheless Sautet brings to it a freshness of approach that other gangster pictures of the period seem to lack. From the absolutely stunning opening sequence it's clear that this film will be infused with a good dose of existential angst as well as the requisite thrills that a really good gangster movie needs.Two fugitives, (Lino Ventura and Stan Krol), have decided it's time to get out of Italy and back to France as the net closes in around them but they need money. They commit a foolhardy, though daring, daylight robbery and go on the run. This opening and the chase that follows is as good as anything in crime movies. The money they make, however, is hardly enough to sustain them, (Ventura has a wife and two sons to support), so they must rely on a network of friends and criminal associates and men on the run, already operating on the very edge, need all the friends they can get, however untrustworthy they may be and these guys friends prove to be very untrustworthy indeed but when tragedy strikes Ventura seems to have no option.With the possible exceptions of Dassin's "Rififi" and several of Jean-Pierre Melville's classic gangster pictures this remains one of the greatest of genre films and is all the better for being, fundamentally, a low-key character piece. Ventura is perfect as the world-weary thief who would really rather just settle down and raise his family and he is matched by a young Jean-Paul Belmondo as the stranger who becomes his only real friend and ally. The brilliant black and white cinematography is by Ghislain Cloquet, (it was shot largely on location), and it is beautifully adapted by Sautet, Pascal Jardin and Jose Giovanni from Giovanni's novel.

A film reduced to its essentials (photographed images in sequence) to portray the dawn and dusk of two stoical gangsters that are also human beings. Milan, Nice, Paris, a journey from exile to tragedy, the disloyalty of old partners, a total stranger that becomes the younger image in the mirror, a new friendship---in Sautet hands, all of these human happenings are conveyed not by words but by the power of images, expressions, action, angles, movement, gestures, moments. Sautet belongs to the same league of Melville, Bresson and other masters of the craft of putting together "pictures in motion"."Less is more". Minimalism assumes that the moviegoer is a human being too, s/he interprets, reflects, makes sense and finds meanings. No distractions and full advantage of the cinematic form: images, sound, edition. Not everything has to be shown or explained. Less words and less information demand for the viewer to fill in the blanks, an active role that might be hard to take. But once the watcher accepts the challenge, the outcome is a tailor-made experience---he is not a passive watcher anymore.

Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) is repeatedly recommended every time I look up a Jean-Pierre Melville film that I had to give it a watch as soon as possible. Since I've been discovering Melville and seemingly working backwards through his filmography, it would be easy for me to mistake this as one of his films, but it was made in 1960, by Claude Sautet, before Melville would come and stake his claim on french neo-noir.Classe Tous Risques has two of the best lead men of the time, Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Ventura plays Abel, a gangster exiled in Italy with his wife and two kids, who wants to come back to Paris because the police are closing in on him. After a roaring and fast paced opening with a big surprise, Abel eventually gets hooked up with Eric Stark (Belmondo) who wants to get into the criminal underworld. Stark becomes Abel's chauffeur and eventual only friend in an underworld that turns it's back on Abel after everything he's done and been through. The film shows the the duality of the two men, the older Abel at the end of his time after tragedy strikes him, and the younger Eric starting off the same way Abel did, falling in love with a beautiful woman who sticks with her man despite the world they are a part of. It never ends pretty for them, or their loved ones. Its one thing to see a individual criminal come to his demise, its different when he has loved ones he risks taking down with him.Much like Melville's film, the seemingly simple story gets more subtlety complicated as it goes along. As usual, as what I feel with Melville's films, it left my head spinning (in a good way) and dying to re watch it again to pick up what I missed the first time. Classe Tous Risques is a definite keeper.