Godard re-works the crime film with even more unruly innovation in Band Of Outsiders. Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) are two restless students who cajole beautiful classmate Odile (Anna Karina) into stealing money from under her own roof, but not before plenty of drinking, dancing and racing through the Louvre. A freewheeling, portentous daydream, the film mixes thriller, slapstick comedy, melodrama and neo-realism to tell a heist story unlike any other, one tender, wild, and mean. “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun,” Godard once said, and this film proves it.
“It’s as if a French poet took an ordinary banal American crime novel and told it to us in terms of the romance and beauty he read between the lines.” – Pauline Kael, The New Republic
“Perhaps Godard’s loveliest movie, certainly his tenderest and most accessible.” – Charles Taylor, Salon
