A man and a woman enter an apartment. It’s clearly hers, but the man makes himself at home. First he disconnects the phone, then imposes on her for dinner and informs her that he will be staying several days. When we see how they met, it becomes clear that the man has forced her to shelter him. But from whom, and why?

Like a fishing line being played out, the story of The Crook is fed to us gradually, never revealing more than is immediately needed. We learn that this suave brute is Simon the Swiss (Jean-Louis Trintignant), just out of prison… but not finished his sentence. The entire first section of Claude Lelouch‘s thriller has Simon keeping one step ahead of les gendarmes in a tight, tense game of misdirection. Later on, his old flame (Christine Lelouch) and a long-time crony (Charles Gérard) join him in an elaborate ransom operation.

When the job takes an unexpected turn, the line we’ve been fed turns out to have a hook. There comes a point at which the film backpedals into the past, but that moment is cleverly disguised, and we aren’t supposed to notice it. Gradually, we twig on details which suggest that some of this action is back story. (I won’t give it away, but there’s a repeated line late in the film that suggests the exact spot where it switched.) The time-shifting structure is a con game just like the ones in the plot. As "fool the audience" tricks go, this one is understated and highly effective.

In a way, Simon is a French James Bond: a debonair ladies man with a dry sense of humour and cool command of every situation. He even has a catch phrase for his drinks. ("No foam.") And though he’s working against the law, not for it, he has a moral centre. But, as with Bond, we never really feel for him or learn much from his relationships. That’s a problem with every character—we know who we’re supposed to like, but not why we should.

I must say, this is a fantastic-looking movie that has been fantastically restored. No dropouts mar the image, and the haze of the airbrush has been applied with restraint, allowing the Euro-retro style to shine through. The sound is petit bourgeois all the way. The disc offers an English-dubbed audio track, and if you watch the film like that, you’re not my friend anymore.

More recent movies like Pulp Fiction and Memento have taken the out-of-sequence structure to greater heights, but The Crook (1970) still offers smart twists and payoffs. Our brains release plenty of pleasing endorphins every time we think, "Ah, THAT’s why he did that." Even the cheeseball opening musical number—imagine if Ennio Morricone did Chicago—turns out to have a deeper context.