Highly rated by Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson and Bertrand Tavernier, and described as the greatest of all French gangster movies by the Guardian, Classe tous risques is an astonishing crime film that was the dazzling directorial debut of the influential Claude Sautet (1924-2000), better known for his later films Un Coeur en Hiver (1992) and Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (1995)

Starring the great Italian-born character actor Lino Ventura as a once-powerful Parisian gangster who has grown weary of his exile in Italy and longs to return home to his wife and two small children in Paris. In order to finance this ambition he decides to pull one last job - boldly executed in broad daylight on the streets of Milan. His getaway proves dangerous but when he enlists the help of his old partners-in-crime, they are reluctant to risk their own safety and instead send a complete stranger - the fresh-faced Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo) - to escort their former comrade to Paris.

***

After hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade, fugitive gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children despite a death sentence hanging over his head. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh off his star turn in Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that's both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema.

***

In a thriller at once ruthless and soulful, Sautet paid attention to men who shot to kill — men to whom loyalty and friendship mattered, along with guns and cash — but also tousled the heads of kids, treated women with respect, and savored the pleasures of sandwiches and beer. Abel Davos (onetime wrestler Lino Ventura) is a tough guy — and a warm husband and father to two sons — who, after a decade on the lam in Milan, wants to get his family home to Paris. Eric Stark (Belmondo) is the freelance thief who helps him after a daring heist goes wrong and former associates of Davos turn on him.

It's a toss-up as to which is more spectacular — the taut, unsentimental chase that opens the picture after Davos and a partner in crime mug guards who are transferring payroll cash, or the underplayed, equally unsentimental bond that develops between Davos and Stark. Sandra Milo, from Fellini's 8 1/2, makes a luscious entr'acte as Stark's love interest, but it's the elemental male relationships that inspire Sautet's greatest moments in a great specimen of recovered cinema treasure.

Excerpt from Entertainment Weekly located HERE