Un Flic (Eng: 'A Cop') (aka Dirty Money) (1972)

All those Mission Impossible movies owe a lot to Jean-Pierre Melville's last French crime "flic" that features a centrepiece stunt distinctly Ethan Hunt in style involving a train and a helicopter...oh, and a cigar robe, a white pencil, and a horseshoe magnet (far too much detail: couldn't he have just gone into the bathroom and reappeared changed?) but unlike the Mission: Impossible movies, which plotwise are pretty straightforward, you'll need to watch Un Flic ("A cop") twice to confirm what might not be clear the first time through: that Alan Delon is a police commissioner, that apart from being committed by the same criminal gang, a drug robbery is a second crime unrelated to the first, and a second watch will help you to distinguish between far too many grey-faced trenchcoats and blonde bombshells, all of them (the bombshells AND the trenchcoats) mesmerized, transfixed by Delon.

★★★☆☆

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The Heist of the Century (El Robo Del Siglo) (2020)

I tend not to like heist films - I lack patience with the set-up knowing the meticulous planning comes undone the second the plan is enacted and I never manage to care much for the crims (so what if everything goes belly up and they get caught?) - but this comedy thriller from Argentina is a rollicking good time, a heist film full of characters you can care about, based on the incredible true story of the 2006 robbery of the Banco Rio in Acassuso, Buenos Aires dubbed by media outlets at the time "The Heist of the Century", a crime staggering in its complexity and ingenuity and one that had the peculiar effect, only in Argentina, of turning the criminals into folk heroes including mastermind Fernando Araujo who wrote the source book and co-wrote this film's screenplay. 

★★★★☆

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