A Clever CrookMovies like A Clever Crook
- Key Features:
- Art theft, Police investigation, Retirement, Criminal investigation, Cat and mouse, Bureaucracy, Underdog, France, Mystery, Heist
- Tone:
- humorous, witty
- Target Audience:
- Mystery fans, Fans of crime comedies, Viewers interested in art heists, International cinema enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Amusement
A Clever Crook

Commissioner Beffrois waits for retirement with mixed enthusiasm when a theft of paintings catches his attention.
A Clever Crook
When a string of jewel robberies hits the French Riviera, suspicion falls on retired thief John “The Cat” Robie. To clear his name, he sets out to trap the copycat himself—entangling a wealthy widow and her beguiling daughter in a seductive game of pursuit, deception, and desire.

A woman must steal a statue from a Paris museum to help conceal her father's art forgeries.

Bored billionaire executive Thomas Crown entertains himself by stealing a Monet from a reputed museum with an elaborate diversion. When Catherine Banning, the insurance company's investigator, takes an interest in Crown, he may have met his match, and a complicated back-and-forth game with seductive undertones begins between them.

Coming out from jail, Lucas has decided to change his life and behave like a good citizen. But when he is taken hostage in a bank by a hare-brained robber, no cops can believe he is not part of the action.

In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.

Antoine, a professor of Greek, and Lise, a police inspector, honeymoon in Greece. There they meet a young couple, Charles, an archaeologist, and Agnes, a dishy flirt. Charles unearths the lovely buttocks of a classical statue and is determined to donate it to the Louvre. Agnes wants to sell it and gets a handsome local sailor to take it for an appraisal. When the sailor is murdered, the police suspect Charles and arrest Antoine as his accomplice. Lise swings into action, but before she can clear the men, Agnes springs them from jail, and now Lise must help them elude the police, find the real murderer, and recover the statue fragment. More art goes missing. What is the statue's secret?

Willy and Tony have a brilliant idea for getting out of it financially: stealing a dog from the brigade des stups. But everything does not go as planned and the two accomplices will have to rely on the most corrupt of the cops.

Victor Vautier is incorrigible: he's in constant motion, working several cons at once, using different names and changing disguises. He's charming and outrageous, incapable of uttering a sentence that isn't embellished or an outright lie. His life goal is to make enough money to build a sea wall to protect Mont-Saint-Michel. Charlotte, a parole officer, shows up: she's young and seems taken in by Victor. He discovers she lives above the Senlus Museum, where her parents are the curators. With two pals he decides to steal a priceless El Greco triptych and then ransom it back to the cultural ministry. What will Charlotte do when she realizes he's used her to make a fortune?

André Masson, specialist in modern art, receives a letter according to which a painting by Egon Schiele had been discovered in Mulhouse. He finds that the work has been missing since 1939. This discovery puts his career in danger.

A detective, fresh out of the academy (lowest mark in class), gets the assignment to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl reporter. She's been interviewed on TV and has questioned the virility of a mobster who kidnaps her later.

The whole intrigue is centered around carte-blanche documents kept in a vault. Whoever fills in the blank becomes the owner of a revue. Big money is involved. The nephew of the owner of the vault is trying to cheat his uncle and have his name in the documents. Everything is even more complicated because the manager of the bank has a finger in the pie, too. Who but a humble bank-teller (Pierre Richard) will ruin the scheme?

A story of friendship between a young convict who is forced to work in a retirement home and a group of crazy old people. Together they organize their escape.

A thrilling mystery that unfurls in the alleys and on the rooftops of the French capital, Paris, over the course of one adventurous evening.

In order to make his little sick brother's dream come true, Leo and his best mates organize a fake score...but on the d day, they make a mistake and the fake score becomes a real hold up.Here starts the extraordinary adventure of PUBLIC Amis.

Four women were murdered, each was knifed and, though they had their clothes torn, they weren't molested. As the famed police inspector Jules Maigret pieces the clues together, he comes to realize that for the elusive man that he suspects to be unmasked, he has to set him a trap.

Tired of life on the run, a pro thief decides to retire — but not before one easy last job with her partner in crime and a feisty new getaway driver.

Unorthodox detective Jean Lavardin is called to a provincial French town after a prank turns deadly.

Arthur and Anatole are two little robbers. They want to rob money, money that will travel in a special train from Paris to Bruxelles. They don't know that other people have planned to do the same thing.

Six months before his retirement from the criminal police, inspector Joss finds his colleague Gouvion dead, in a poorly faked suicide attempt. Joss loses his temper, and investigates on his own, which leads him through the bas-fond of Paris...

Valeria, young secretary of a producer, lives with an eccentric mother and secretly writes for a successful screenwriter, Alessandro. One day, she receives an unusual present from a stranger: it’s the plot of a movie about the mysterious but really-happened theft of a famous Caravaggio’s painting.

An old detective does not want to retire. The only way out is to prove to his boss that he still can catch criminals. The problem is that there were no crimes recently to work on. Together with his retired friend he decides to commit a perfect crime himself and then quickly solve it. Real problems start when a real criminal steals money he has stolen.

Esposito is a thief who cons tourists in Rome. Officer Bottoni manages to catch him and starts persecuting him. When Esposito manages to flee, Bottoni's superiors inform him that he'll lose his job if he can't catch Esposito.

An art curator decides to seek revenge on his abusive boss by conning him into buying a fake Monet, but his plan requires the help of an eccentric and unpredictable Texas rodeo queen.

In Athens a collection of emeralds is successfully stolen by a team of robbers, led by safe-cracker Azad. Things go smoothly until they miss the ship by which they planned their escape; a police chief pursues Azad while he waits for the next ship to set off.

After learning that the art thief she has been chasing is her ex-lover, an officer working for Interpol concocts a plan to catch him red-handed.

In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless, and talentless actress, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Helped by her best friend, Pauline, a young, unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out.

Hoping to leave his criminal lifestyle behind him, a successful art thief teams up with a sexy con woman to pull off the ultimate heist and set himself free.

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Claude Massoulier is murdered while hunting at the same place as Julien Vercel, an estate agent who knew him and whose fingerprints are found on Massoulier's car. As the police discover that Marie-Christine Vercel, Julien's wife, was Massoulier's mistress, Julien is the prime suspect. But his secretary, Barbara Becker, while not quite convinced he is innocent, defends him and leads her private investigations.

A bumbling Paris policeman is doggedly determined to capture the master thief that repeatedly eludes him, even when they're the last two men on Earth.

A high-profile burglar reconciles with his two daughters (half-siblings) to help him retaliate against his ex-partner who betrayed him.

A maverick cop and a meticulous detective join forces with a charming ex-hacker to solve an officer's disappearance and save Nice from disaster.

Franck wants a quiet life and a fresh start. After 15 years of a failed theatre career, he finds a seemingly perfect job: museum guard. But that is before he meets Sybille, his neurotic colleague.

The tasty story of a retired teacher who decides to make his former students pay for years of heckling and humiliation.

Enigmatic gangster Silien may or may not be responsible for informing on Faugel, who was just released from prison and is already involved in what should be a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

Gentleman gangster Max and his partner, Riton, pull off their last, most successful heist and find themselves comfortable enough to retire in the style they enjoy. However, Max confides the details of the theft to his younger mistress, Josey -- who has secretly taken up with ambitious young rival gangster Angelo. Angelo then has Riton kidnapped and demands the stash of gold as ransom, which threatens Max's dreams of the perfect retirement.

The sophisticated thief of art Robert "Cuma" Cuminski is released on probation from the local prison by the corrupt Doctor Wiaderny to organize the theft of the famous Leonardo Da Vinci painting "Lady with Ermine" for the dealer Gruby. Three years ago, Cuma was accidentally arrested by the snoopy detective Wilk after a successful heist in the house of the collector Lehman, but he has not ratted his comrade Julian.

Detective Yvonne is the widow of police chief Santi, a local hero in a town on the French Riviera. When she learns he was in fact a crooked cop, she tries to right his wrongs. Crossing paths with Antoine, a victim of Santi, sets off a series of wild events.

Léonard Monestier owns a large fortune, alas his wife Cynthia made a bad investment in a worthless oil concession. Far from letting this get him down, Léonard decides to find a sucker to buy this concession from him. Right on cue appears Antoine Brévin, a befuddled billionaire who is very interested in Léonard's beautiful daughter Patricia and would do anything to win her hand...

As the daring thief Arsène Lupin ransacks the homes of wealthy Parisians, the police, with a secret weapon in their arsenal, attempt to ferret him out.

Max and Riton, 2 thieves make plan to steal money in a train station office. They will operate through the wall in the public toilets.

Jack Palmer is a Paris-based detective with a huge ego. Ange Leoni is a rebel native of Corsica whose location can't be pinned down by even the most dogged of detectives. Approached by an obscure, small-time attorney and charged with the seemingly simple task of locating the missing Leoni, gifted gumshoe Palmer accepts the job under the assumption that it will be the easiest money of his professional career. But this superstar sleuth is about to find out just how mistaken he was...

A criminal mastermind sets up a phony film production as part of a plan to smuggle stolen gold.

Expert conman Joe Thanks teams up with half-breed Bill and naive Lucy to steal $300,000 from the Indian-hating Major Cabot. Their elaborate plan is full of disguises, double-crosses, and chases, but Joe always seems to know what he's doing.

In Paris, a young girl is found dead in a Parisian square, wearing an evening dress. Commissioner Maigret will try to identify her and then understand what happened to the victim.

Louis just found the corpse of a man in front of his apartment building. Taken in for custody by Captain Buron, he finds himself on the wrong end of a surreal interrogation. But how can you prove you are innocent when the cops are crazy?

Maria, who's not as young as she used to be and who helps people older than her, is living from hand to mouth. She can't quite accept her precarious situation and steals a few euros here and there from all those lovely people she looks after with such devotion, and who adore her for it… But after an accusation of abuse of a vulnerable person, Maria winds up in police custody.

Police commissioner Lo Gatto is in charge of the local Italian police station within Vatican State. During an investigation, following the murder of a Vatican priest, he decides to question the Pope! For this reason Lo Gatto is sent to a Sicilian remote island Favignana. There is very little for the commissioner to do on the quiet island, so Lo Gatto decides to investigate the vanishing of a tourist which quickly becomes a very complicated affair.

Two septuagenarians go to Tuscany to prevent their old friend from killing the man who cuckolded him fifty years ago.

An art dealer, Charles Mortdecai, searches for a stolen painting rumored to contain a secret code that gains access to hidden Nazi gold.

Thomas Gardesse, a traveling alarm systems salesman, is arrested for a minor offense and sentenced to six months imprisonment. To win the respect of his fellow inmates, he claims he is "The Marquis," a brilliant robber whose identity has remained a mystery. Two weeks before his release, an armed robber named Quentin Tasseau helps him escape and takes him to Manila so he can take part in a robbery whose mastermind requires the talents of the Marquis.

A comedy centered on three museum security guards who devise a plan to steal back the artworks to which they have become attached after they are transferred to another museum.

When the boss' unlucky daughter is missing in South America, Campana is sent to watch the boss' most unlucky employee who is sent as a private detective in hopes he can duplicate the daughter's mistakes.

An aging gambler on a losing streak attempts to rob a casino in Monte Carlo. But someone's already tipped off the cops before he even makes a move.

One-time gangster Antoine is enjoying retirement on the coast, now managing a boating club. He receives a visit from a former accomplice who asks for a loan. The money will be repaid by a crook who is now in hiding; Antoine intends to recover his money.

An aging thief hopes to retire and live off his ill-gotten wealth when a young kid convinces him into doing one last heist.

After the failure of his recent criminal exploits, international con artist Alexandre Dupré sets off for Venice to try to dupe some Japanese business men into buying a fake copy of a stolen Caneletto. On the aeroplane, a stranger asks him to look after his briefcase until after they have landed. Alexandre agrees, but the stranger is shot dead soon after and Alexandre himself becomes the target of enemy agents who are keen to recover the briefcase...

The ambitious police officer Cruchot is transferred to St. Tropez. He's struggling with crimes such as persistent nude swimming, but even more with his teenage daughter, who's trying to impress her rich friends by telling them her father was a millionaire and owned a yacht in the harbor.

Frank Valken, high-flying robber, has just made a final masterful break. At least that’s what he believes… Ideal suspects, Valken and his gang find themselves involved in a criminal case of thirty years. It seems that the crazy killers are back.

From petty theft on the benches of Belleville to the over-publicised hold-ups of the large Parisian banks, this is the spectacular rise of Simon and his gang. They are capable of emptying a series of safes under the very nose of the police who are bewildered by the calm audacity shown by the group.

An FBI agent is suspicious of two master thieves, quietly enjoying their retirement near what may - or may not - be the biggest score of their careers.

Michael Lynch is a notorious criminal with two wives and a flair for showmanship. He's also a huge embarrassment to the local police, who are determined to bring him down once and for all.

When political thugs murder an opponent's volunteer and also kill a cop, chief inspector Verjeat believes the politician who hired them is as guilty as the murderous goon. Verjeat's pursuit of the councilman, Lardatte, gets him a warning from his superiors. When he embarrasses Lardatte while disarming a hostage (the dead volunteer's father), Verjeat is told he's being transferred within a week. He speeds up his hunt for the goon and, with Lefévre, one of his young detectives, he engineers a complicated scheme to buy more time before the transfer. How should Verjeat play out his values of honor and duty?

"Le Dabe" retired many years ago and now he lives in the Tropics where he owns stables and horses. He is a very rich man. He was the king of all money counterfeiters. He is contacted from Paris to organize a new job. He says no. But when he finds out the the currency that should be counterfeited is the Dutch florin, he accepts immediately. He retired after having counterfeited 100 florin notes just before the Queen Wilhelmina retired them from circulation. He flies to Paris. But the gang is not to be trusted, at least not all of them.

Ralf Milan, a hitman, arrives in Montpellier to kill an important witness. He checks in a hotel without knowing that his neighbour has become neurotic after his wife left him.

Betty and Victor are a pair of scam artists. One day Betty brings in Maurice, a treasurer of a multinational company. Maurice is due to transfer 5 millions francs out of Switzerland, and Betty is convinced he plans to steal that money.

A cold-war spy parody. After the death of an armaments manufacturer, an international group of spies is drawn into a high-stakes battle of wits to obtain the valuable military patents which have been inherited by the lovely widow.

A cop investigates whether the man convicted of murdering his daughter is really guilty.

The protagonist is Carmen X, a sexy female member of a terrorist gang. She asks her uncle Jean, a washed-up film director if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends, but they are in fact planning to rob a bank. During the robbery she falls in love with a security guard. The film intercuts between Carmen's escape with the guard, her uncle's attempt to make a comeback film, and a string quartet attempting to perform Beethoven.

After losing their respective nest eggs thanks to a bumbling bank employee, three men use him to plot a bold and batty heist to get their money back.

In turn-of-the-century Paris, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. In retaliation, Georges steals the fiancé's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a lifetime of burglary.

Vladimir and Hector, two secret agents opposed in every way, are trying to recover a top secret material stolen by unknown intruders.

Charles, fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cell mate, Francis, to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino.

When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld, however, after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist. All the while, quirky Police Commissioner Mattei, who was the one to lose custody of Vogel, is determined to find him.

A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.

Alphonse Tram is unwittingly involved in several murders despite having no memory of committing the crimes. His confusion lead him to confess to his neighbour, Inspector Morvandieu. Alphonse and Morvandieu become the axis around which murders occur.

When they realize the times are changing, five crooks decide to switch from bank robberies to personality abductions.

The famous Pink Panther jewel has once again been stolen and Inspector Clouseau is called in to catch the thief. The Inspector is convinced that 'The Phantom' has returned and utilises all of his resources – himself and his Asian manservant – to reveal the identity of 'The Phantom'.

What does Cyrano de Bergerac do at a chicken farmer? This is the problem of Raymond, who has always kept his passion for the theater hidden. But when he is threatened with bankruptcy, he decides to try everything for the whole.

The trademark of The Phantom, a renowned jewel thief, is a glove left at the scene of the crime. Inspector Clouseau, an expert on The Phantom's exploits, feels sure that he knows where The Phantom will strike next and leaves Paris for the Tyrolean Alps, where the famous Lugashi jewel 'The Pink Panther' is going to be. However, he does not know who The Phantom really is, or for that matter who anyone else really is...

After the forcible transfer to his Bavarian home village, an ex-criminal cop investigates the death of a school principal who he thinks had lots to hide.

The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.

A police inspector must solve two grisly murders. The problem is that his only suspect is a blind man.

Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman doggedly investigates CEO Michel Humeau, who is accused of participating in massive corporate malfeasance. As her investigation leads her into the upper echelons of government, Jeanne becomes intoxicated by the power she is amassing.

The funny clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead in circus "Apollo". The retired commissioner 00 Schneider is asked to assume control of the case. Schneider and his aged sidekick Körschgen investigate to find the murderer.

Three kindly old men decide to light up the dimming twilight of their lives with a last blaze of glory – by sticking up a Manhattan bank in broad daylight.

A serial killer, nicknamed Le Ver(s) Solitaire (The Lone Worm) for the alexandrines left at the crime scenes, is spreading terror. Under the orders of a commissioner, Clarisse Sterling, a rookie in the crime squad, can only rely on her instinct, 200g of chouquettes and the virtues of a well-placed pineapple to solve this investigation and save her skin.

On their way to Monte Carlo, Monaco, Marilyn and her husband, Neil, meet several other married couples, including Julian and Phoebe, who are traveling with a lost dog they plan to return to its wealthy owner for a large reward. But, when the dog's mistress is murdered, the travelers become the prime suspects, and Inspector Bonnard is determined to track them all down.

A businessman in Italy, who doesn't pay any taxes, and a financier always on the hunt for tax evaders come into contact because their sons share an apartment in Paris.

Belle Duke, in order to get revenge on her former lover Philip Bang, organize his jail break. But instead of Philip is the Italian Felice Brianza, AKAS Felix, to escape. Now Felix is obliged to help Philip to escape. He will succeeded and from that moment on the two will join to defraud Belle. The swindle plot become more complicate when Felix falls in love for Philip's daughter.

Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.

Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.

The world's top thieves join forces to pull off the heist of a lifetime. But when they find themselves pursued across Europe by a legendary French detective, they'll have to take their game to the next level.

An aging gangster, Fernand Naudin is hoping for a quiet retirement when he suddenly inherits a fortune from an old friend, a former gangster supremo known as the Mexican. If he is ambivalent about his new found wealth, Fernand is positively nonplussed to discover that he has also inherited his benefactor’s daughter, Patricia. Unfortunately, not only does Fernand have to put up with the thoroughly modern Patricia and her nauseating boyfriend, but he also had to contend with the Mexican’s trigger-happy former employees, who are determined to make a claim.

Conan tries to track down Kaito Kid, who supposedly steals a replica of one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers paintings during an auction.

While about to take off, Monica, the owner of a famous influencer cat named Diva, and Jack, an international thief whose dog Chichi swallowed a stolen ruby, dis- cover that their pets have gotten lost on the tarmac. The owners – and their pets – must team up to find their loved ones. But they don’t know that Brandt, a cop hot on their heels, will do anything to get his hands on the ruby!

Psychotherapist Ruben Brandt becomes the most wanted criminal in the world when he and four of his patients steal paintings from the world's most renowned museums and art collections.

