Any Number Can Win

1963 ‘Mélodie en sous-sol’ Directed by Henri Verneuil

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.

Jean Gabin Alain Delon Claude Cerval Viviane Romance Henri Virlojeux Jean Carmet José Luis de Villalonga Rita Cadillac Dora Doll Dominique Davray Germaine Montero Maurice Biraud Carla Marlier

Alternative Titles

Gran jugada en la Costa Azul, The Big Snatch, Ληστεία στο Μόντε Κάρλο

romance drama crime

118 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by MeMyNonsense ★★★★

Firmly in the tradition of classic french capers like Rififi and Bob le flambeur comes Any Number Can Win — a complex and decidedly cool heist flick that more than delivers. Jean Gabin plays an aging con, recently released from prison who in pursuit of the mythical ‘last score’ enlists a cocky ex-cellmate (Alain Delon) in order to take down a Cannes casino.
Gabin and Delon are in top form portraying crafty crooks filled trickery and deceit instead of tired-old ‘criminals with conscience’ and share a delicious rivalrous dynamic. The scenes where the punk thief’s impetuous ways collide with the veteran’s hardcore professionalism are an absolute delight.
Crime-savvy director Henri Verneuil eschews high octane action in favour of a deliberately…
Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★ 1

How cool does a widescreen '60's French black and white heist flick set on the French Riviera with a hip jazzy score and starring two generations of Gallic uber-manhood (Jean Gabin and Alain Delon) sound to you?!
Well, if the answer to that question is 'Cooler than Kool and the Gang after an ice bath', then get your peepers all over Henri Verneuil's crime drama, because I'll doubt you'll be disappointed. From the moment the credits roll as Gabin makes his way back home after a five year stretch in the slammer, right up until a post-robbery denouement which - consciously or unconsciously, I have no idea! - riffs on the final moments of John Huston's The Treasure Of The…
Review by IronWatcher ★★★★

Recorded from TV
Important heist cinema from the heyday of European genre film, with three distinctive names in its hand luggage. Henri Verneuil, Jean Gabin and Alain Delon.
The oh so cool Ocean trilogy of Steven Soderbergh has leased the planned coolness in this millennium for itself, because George, Brad and Matt plus appendages in a cut thunderstorm meet up there, but what is THAT here please? That's how you rob a casino in style and above all "cool" (the word practically hovers over the film). "Any Number Can Win" (in the German version "Lautlos wie die Nacht"-Silent as the Night) already has the cigarette after sex on the bedside table. That's how cool this is.
Charles (Jean Gabin), who…
Review by More_Badass ★★★★

Ocean’s...Deux? This French New Wave heist thriller exudes jazzy coastal glitz and radiates with the dual star-power of Jean Gabin and a pre-Samourai Alain Delon. Gabin plays pragmatic professional criminal Charles, the sort who speaks with experience-hewed curtness, who hides no secrets from his loyal loving wife. Delon plays young cocky rookie Francis, as cool and slick as expected. Once former cellmates, the two are working a daring casino caper, with Delon conning his way around security as a romancing playboy. But the hotheaded pleasures of his facade might just tank the entire job...
Henri Verneuil directs this with an assured smoothness, casually shifting from protagonist introductions to heist execution with a measured pace that has time for a bathhouse…
Review by Adriana Scarpin ★★★★

Em honra do centenário de Henri Verneuil.
Deliciosamente estiloso e basicamente onde Gabin passa o cetro a Delon como rei do polar, mas talvez eu tivesse gostado mais se os personagens não fossem tão burros, embora seja a burrice que nos leva aos belíssimos planos finais.
Box Versátil Fime Noir Francês Volume 2.
Review by CJ Johnson ★★★½

De Niro and Zac Efron should have remade this rather than make Dirty Grandpa. Gabin gets to chew out Delon in all their scenes together, often while wearing pyjamas. Not the greatest casino heist film, nor the best French 60s crime film. Perhaps not even the best Gabin / Delon collaboration. But it’s a Gabin / Delon 60s French casino heist film, and you’ve gotta pay that.
Review by Kevin Jones ★★★★

The 1960s, 60/100
Slick, confident, and jazzy, Any Number Can Win is a classic French crime caper. The target is a casino. To get there, the criminals fend off their family, counterparts with scruples, and the police, all while putting into the works a prolonged plot to make their presence at the casino completely acceptable. Mister Charles (Jean Gabin) is the organizer. He recently got out of prison and is ready for his next heist. While locked up, he met young man Francis (Alain Delon) and thinks of him as the perfect partner for the job. It will require someone younger than Charles to shimmy through vents and get into the position, while Francis meets another key detail: he is…
Review by Nabil Tarantino ★★★★

i'd watch a full-length movie of nothing more than Jean Gabin sitting in a '55 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud at night with his sunglasses on smoking cigarettes while some jazz music plays in the background.
Review by SaintPauly ★★★

My problem is I can't forget modern cinema enough to enjoy some of the classics. The proof is, I found this film like Columbo's Citroën: slow and noisy (seriously, I nearly filed a police report on the jazz soundtrack because I felt so attacked by it).
If I give it a 6, will you promise not to hate me?
Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★

So part of the "meh" rating is that heist movies are pretty hit or miss for me. I loved The Killing, I thought Topkapi was excellent, but The Asphalt Jungle and really any of the Ocean's movies do very little for me. This ended up falling into the camp of the latter, but it's absolutely not without its moments. Alain Delon gives a star-making performance, showing how perfectly suited he is for 60s sexy cool. Jean Gabin is fantastic, though compared to Delon he gets less to do, which is a shame. The score is jazzy and fun, and the ending is absolutely incredible. Much like the 60s Ocean's 11, this is a heist movie that packs a punch with…
Review by 🎄Emmeline ★★★½

Definitely has gritty and slick qualities present at all times. The characters embody this dichotomy most (particularly Alain’s), but there are echoes of it in the clever cinematography too.
Review by Julian Towers ★★★★

77/100
Viewed this on an utter whim, with the lack of expectations you traditionally bring to a film you— and many others, it seems— have never heard of. Surprise, then, that this is an utterly superlative— even miraculous— heist film. Difficult to make sense of why it works so well, as it's really just wholly pleasurable from jazzy beginning to brilliant, buoyant end. Perhaps it's because there's almost nothing superfluous here, every action made by the characters is expressly related to the big-job in one-way-or-another, with occasionally disorienting results (e.g we're not sure at first why Delon is taking the dancer out on dates, and it's not until Gabin questions him about it till we realize, "oh, he wants access…

Recent reviews

Review by Derek Smith ★★★½

While The Fifth Horseman Is Fear and The Black Vampire fall on the more disturbing, thematically weighty end of the noir spectrum, Henri Verneuil’s Any Number Can Win is a much lighter offering, though it’s quite an assured and stylish piece of mainstream entertainment. Verneuil, first and foremost, understands the simple surface pleasures noir can provide, be it gazing at a stone-faced Jean Gabin patiently skulking in the back of a Rolls Royce as he watches his master plan beginning to unfold or Alain Delon comically hamming it up as he uses his charm and sex appeal to fool everyone in the casino resort he plans to rob.
As delightful as it is to behold all the sharply written tête-à-têtes…
Review by Jeremy Nichols ★★★½

hard to beat the final scene/shot in this one.
Review by sockly ★★★★

ain’t no rififi
Review by buffetfroid ★★★½

Good heist film... while there are some minor characters, it's basically a two-man show with Gabin and Delon.
Review by Sbsulliv ★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Nice twist with bags as detail that leads to suspicion and ultimate trip up of casino heist. Good ending but long route. Alain Delon doesn't seem like Delon in this movie. He is just another handsome French actor. Gabin, however, is very much Gabib, and thankfully so.
Review by Jonathan Wander ★★★★

Alain Delon and Jean Gabin are so good in this tense heist movie. The OMG ending is one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Review by Chris Campbell ★★★★½

Stylish wide-screen black & white French noir with a jazzy soundtrack and complex and dynamic camerawork. Brilliantly pairing Jean Gabin as an aging criminal who sets up one last score and the young newcomer played by Alain Delon, it's about different generations and it all has the feeling of inevitability. One of the things I loved about the film was in the way that it took time to establish the characters and situations. Slowly revealing the tensions and elements of the story that become important later on as the tension builds and we get closer and closer to the heist. Fascinating too to see that the film was written by Michel Audiard, father of Jacques, whose similar later French crime films have a more contemporary style and coolness.
Review by eiridescent ★★★½

Noir City: International #6
The downside of being a genius at meticulously pre-planning a heist is you might start to rely too much on not having to improvise, and then when something doesn't quite go the way you expect......
Great ending to an ultra-cool heist movie. Less thrilling, more jazzy and glamorous than Rififi.
Review by FilmClassic

Noir City International 2020
Introduction by Eddie Muller.
A bit slow to start, but attention is rewarded with a great ending.
Review by Andy Wolverton ★★★★

Gabin. Delon. What else do you need to know? Noirvember 2020, part of the Noir City International virtual film noir festival:
bit.ly/3kB1wWG
Review by Leavingfilmstrk ★★★★½

A good heist film with maybe the greatest ending ever. The last half hour couldn't be more suspenseful, and the the last 15 minutes are fantastic. Jean Gabin and Alain Delon are everything you want them to be.
Review by mackjay ★★★½

Caper movies are irresistible to some, and MÉLODIE EN SOUS-SOL (ANY NUMBER CAN WIN) certainly fits the bill. It's no RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES, but the French did have a flair for this kind of thing and it works right through to the end, even if we'd like to know just a bit more at that point. Alain Delon bargained to make this film, hoping to expand his fame beyond France and Italy. He's very good as the beautiful bad boy, a taker and a cheat who'll do whatever it takes to get ahead, without actually working. Jean Gabin plays his usual character: grumpy, rattling off instructions. It's good, but we've seen it before. At least they didn't pair him with a much younger woman this time. The heist is excitingly, and realistically handled. Henri Verneuil was a master by this point, directing it all, with locations mostly in Cannes. Only complaint: the annoying, relentless music score.