Cash

No Clooney or Pitt but this is a fun French Ocean’s Eleven.

No Clooney or Pitt but this is a fun French Ocean’s Eleven.

This 2008 French thriller starring Jean Dujardin (soon to be famous globally thanks to his role in the
Oscar-nominated The Artist), and Jean
‘rent-a-thriller’ Reno, runs along the same vein as Ocean’s Eleven (though it’s
not half as successful), as a mob of con artists try to outwit each other. Who’s
the good guy and who’s the bad?

A criminal with exquisite
manners, Cash (Dujardin) is a bit of an expert when it comes to large-scale,
complicated heists which are dependent as much on confidence games as on
throwing one’s muscle about.

When his brother and partner in
crime Solal is bumped off by members of a rival crime fraternity, the suave
Cash joins forces with a well-known thief to pull off the biggest robbery in
history and retrieve the gains this gang stole from him.

Enter
old hand Maxime Dubreuil (Jean Reno) and the eye candy – Dubreil’s stunning protégé
Garance (Alice Taglioni). The trio
are joined as they prepare for the heist to end all heists by another beauty,
Julia (Valeria Golino), whose looks
belie her mastery of all things underhand.

She’s
not all she seems, though. What her fellow crims haven’t twigged is that Julia
is actually working undercover for the police, trying to undo Cash and his
operation from the inside out. A-ha…

Written and directed by one of
France’s leading screenwriters Eric
Besnard, Cash is not quite as slick as it would like to be, with plot which
can be convoluted at times. Still, it’s entertaining enough and Reno gives his
usual charismatic performance. Watch out, too, for a surprise French-speaking
cameo from Belfast actor Ciaran Hinds.