Any Number Can Win
The classic meets the cool when dapper Jean Gabin teams up with smoldering matinee idol Alain Delon in Henri Verneuil's 1962 caper filmAny Number Can Win. White-haired Gabin carries decades of French crime films with him as the career criminal who shuffles home from a five-year prison stretch and finds himself a stranger among the new high-rise apartments that have sprung up around his cozy old cottage. Aging delinquent Delon (who looks as if he stepped out of the road show ofGreaseunder his slick hair and black leather jacket) becomes his  unlikely partner in a scheme to knock off the richest casino on the  Mediterranean coast, the youthful brawn to Gabin's experience and calculation.  Posing as rich high rollers, they scope out the joint, and Delon woos a leggy  Swedish dancer in hot-blooded courtship, a shot of sex that slows the plot but  provides its own small charms thanks to Verneuil's modern continental frankness  and Delon's cocky charm. It's all part of the deliberate, precise groundwork laid for the heist, a masterfully realized sequence of calm, clean professionalism. The twist and the grueling tension are saved for the inspired denouement, a delicious set piece of ironic understatement. The swinging rock & roll score and handsome black-and-white widescreen photography are tasty flourishes to this tightly scripted, economically directed  crime classic.--Sean Axmaker