So this is a movie from 1970, and you can tell it by like the telephones and the hairstyles (at one point, a nightclub had dancing girls that my wife accurately described as “the Rose Nylund dancers”); but you wouldn’t know it from the plot and structure of this movie, which could have been released this summer.

Fundamentally, this is a heist movie, except it’s not really about the heist — the heist is planned and shown, and it has that smooth efficiency that’s a big draw of heist movies, but it’s not the focus of the movie. It’s about the people on either side of it, with main characters who are both criminals and police. It’s about figuring out who you can trust, and making your way in a world that’s full of a lot of bullshit.

But mostly, it’s smooth and stylish and moody and cool, in the way that European movies of this era (this one is French) so often are. And that focus on mood is where it doesn’t feel particularly modern. It’s a slow movie, and infused with a kind of tragic languor — people aren’t making quippy jokes or whatever, they’re moving forward on a path whose end they seem to have already anticipated, and aren’t in any rush to get there. Recommended to people who like movies with this kind of mood.

As a side note, one of the things I do appreciate about modern American movies is that they have multi-ethnic casts, because my god it is impossible to tell apart all the “vaguely Gallic looking guy with dark hair” characters. I was deeply grateful that they gave one of the leads a moustache, as he’s the only character I was instantly sure of in any scene.