The Burglars

A team of thieves led by Azad, a specialist at opening safes, breaks into a wealthy man's villa in Athens and steals a valuable collection of emeralds. The robbery goes as planned, but the gang misses the cargo ship they intended to use for their escape. While they wait for the next vessel, Azad finds himself pursued by Abel Zacharia, a police official whose interest in the stolen jewels goes beyond an ordinary investigation.

Henri Verneuil directed and co-wrote the film with Vahé Katcha, producing it with Jérôme Seydoux. It followed The Sicilian Clan in Verneuil's filmography, arriving between that 1969 crime film and The Night Caller in 1975. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Azad, with Omar Sharif as Zacharia, Dyan Cannon as Lena, Robert Hossein as Ralph, Nicole Calfan as Hélène and Myriam Feune de Colombi as Isabelle Tasco. An Italian-French co-production, the film was made for a budget of 15 million dollars and took 33 million dollars worldwide, a return that indicates it found a substantial international audience.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.6 from around 3,400 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 from a much smaller pool of 135 votes. The two audiences converge on a broadly favourable but measured assessment of this Athens-set crime story and its cat-and-mouse contest over the emeralds.