Metacritic reviews

Among the picture's many surprises is a superb robbery scene filmed in a near-total silence that contrasts exhilaratingly with the noisy flamboyance of more recent films in this venerable genre.

It's terse, atmospheric, fatalistic, with vertiginous camera angles and edits offsetting its gray documentary flatness.

The new print does justice to Philippe Agostini's splendidly atmospheric cinematography.

No matter how many heists you've seen, how many gangs you've watched fall apart or how many aging crooks you've seen walk up a mean street to a violent destiny, Rififi never loses its ruthless grace and force.

The granddaddy of all caper/heist movies. The work that defined the genre for the subsequent four decades of filmmakers, none of whom was able to surpass it for style or suspense.

It becomes as savage as ''Reservoir Dogs,'' ''The Killing,'' or any of the other dozens of films over which it still casts a shadow.

One of the great crime thrillers, the benchmark all succeeding heist films have been measured against, it's no musty museum piece but a driving, compelling piece of work, redolent of the air of human frailty and fatalistic doom.

A sweaty-browed exercise in precision filmmaking, but one that doesn't cheat you with wisps of tension and the pretense of attitude.

A vivid exercise in hokum that more or less invented the idea of French film noir...and not just for Americans.

The opening half-hour--the burglary of a jewelry store, filmed in meticulous detail--is as good as its inspiration in The Asphalt Jungle, but the film turns moralistic and sour in the last half, when the thieves fall out.