The main point in a 4.6 piece about the just-deceased Jules Dassin by Time‘s Richard Corliss is that aside from his reputation as the father of the sophisticated heist film, he was a gifted but not exceptionally talented in-and-outer who lived through a 40-year dry spell after his last big hit, Topkapi, in 1964.

That’s not an unfair verdict, but some of what Corliss says veers on the mean-spirited. He under-values, at the very least, the delicious aroma of first-rate heist films, and how grateful millions are for the survival of the genre, and that Dassin did something really special by simultaneously creating and upgrading in one fell swoop.
Corliss reminds that an official remake of Rififi is due out next year, with Al Pacino as the Tony le Stephanois character. Is that so? With Harold Becker directing and a screenplay by Bo Goldman? I thought that had gone by the wayside. I thought Al Pacino had been hypnotized and kidnapped by Jon Avnet.