Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

ma-cortes ¨The burglars¨ is a good French movie about hold-up with top-notch actors . Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a delinquent who along with a motley group (Robert Hossein , Renato Salvatori and his girlfriend played by Nicole Calfan) plans a robbing . Azad pretends the perfect robbery recruiting his expert accomplices but a Police Inspector named Amed Zacharia (Omar Shariff) tracks down on them . The hold-up is carefully schemed on the Tasco(Jose Luis Villalonga)'s home .The morning after newspapers publicize ¨Tasco robbed of 1.000.000 in emeralds¨. Meanwhile Azad falls in love with a gorgeous woman (Dyan Cannon). But the bad luck and the corrupt Zacharia does the crime gone awry.This heist movie packs thrills, emotion, exciting burglary, extraordinary performances , spectacular car chases, and a moving finale . Sensational acting by two big star names, Jean Paul Belmondo and Omar Shariff. Belmondo steals the show , as he runs , bound and leaps ; such as Jackie Chan , he jumps over buses , cars and makes his own stunts . Strong secondary cast as Robert Hossein , Renato Salvatori , Jose Luis Villalonga , among others. Interesting and thrilling screenplay based on a novel by David Goodis , whose books have been frequently adapted on cinema as ¨Street of no return, Shoot the piano player and Dark passage¨ . Atmospheric cinematography by Claude Renoir , though is necessary an urgent remastering . Nice musical score with catching leitmotif composed by the maestro Ennio Morricone and conducted by Bruno Nicolai.The picture is professionally directed by Henry Verneuil, a Turkish director working in France from the 40s. Although not a director of great reputation among the critics, his movies have almost all been aimed squarely at the commercial market. Verneuil is an expert on heist-genre such as he proved in ¨The Sicilians clan(68)¨ and ¨Melodie in soul soul¨, both of them with with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, furthermore on Warlike genre : ¨Weekend at Dunkirk¨and ¨The 25th hour¨and even directed one Western : Guns of San Sebastian(68)¨. He seemed to have dropped out of the film-making after 1976, but in 1981 unexpectedly reappeared with yet another of his caper film : ¨Thousand millions of dollars¨. Rating : Acceptable and passable, a must see for French cinema lovers and Belmond and Shariff fans.

Umar Mansoor Bajwa The Burglars is a good entertaining movie to watch during leisure hours. The futile but reckless car chase sequence is compelling and Belmondo vs Omar Shariff is an exciting combination.Inspite of all the coercion and blackmailing by Zacharia (played by Shariff), the scoundrel played by Belmondo manages to escape at the end and the cop had to grapple in a heap of wheat flow in a silos tank. The theme music produced by Ennio Morricone has a subtle and beguiling tinge of danger and suspense.This movie is a much better entertainment than watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "The Mummy" or the recent "2012 end of the world" which can only be enjoyed by people sporting puerile imagination and fictional taste. A show of death and destruction, creepy images and fiction superimposed by computer animation and special effects does not correspond to good movie making.

moonspinner55 The first twenty minutes of "The Burglars" concerns a highly complex and detailed home invasion/safe robbery, with four crooks in Greece making off with a million dollars worth of emeralds; unfortunately for them, the chief investigator on the case is playing both sides of the law, and he's onto them from the start. Based on David Goodis' novel "The Burglar", and previously filmed in the U.S. under that title in 1957, this caper has such a meticulously mounted set-up that it's a bit strange to have it change gears almost immediately into a chase-laden cat-and-mouse game (with amusingly derivative elements). Dyan Cannon is used as (very lovely) window-dressing, but the real flirting comes between master thief Jean-Paul Belmondo and crooked cop Omar Sharif (they share a Greek meal together that is so specific, it's hard to believe the intimate tension wasn't unintentional). Some of the action is truly hair-raising, and the film is generally good-natured and well-made, if familiar. **1/2 from ****

hnpsara I remember the filming of this movie in 1971. Not many foreign movies were filmed in Athens, so this one attracted quite a bit of attention. I particularly remember the chase scene with the yellow trolley bus outside the Athens Hilton. The scene only takes a few seconds in the movie, but it took about a week to film, with the trolley bus immobilized in front of a busy traffic intersection, causing massive traffic jams! Re. the wild car chase: for someone living in Athens, the scene sequences are illogical, jumping instantaneously from one neighborhood of the Athens-Piraeus metro area to another, located even as much as 15 km away! But the net effect on film is great, perhaps even as great as the 'Bullitt' car chase.