Les Tontons Flingueurs



Les Tontons Flingueurs (sometimes known as Crooks in Clover in English) is a cult French film by Georges Lautner released in 1963, and whose memorable screenplay was the work of Michel Audiard. The cast includes Lino Ventura, Bernard Blier and Francis Blanche.

Fernand, a former mobster, returns to Paris at the urging of a dying friend, "the Mexican", who anoints him his successor at the head of a criminal gang. However, the Mexican's former henchmen resent Fernand's promotion and try to get rid of him. But even more problematic, Fernand finds himself saddled with the Mexican's daughter Patricia, a flighty and playful young woman whom he now has to care for.


 * Adaptation Displacement: The film was adapted from the novel Grisbi or not Grisbi by Albert Simonin, but is much more famous than the original work.
 * Anti-Hero: Fernand.
 * Blond Guys Are Evil: Theo (who's also a Gayngster).
 * Entendre Failure: Patricia was told by her father that "Fernand got me out of deep water", which she assumes involved rescue from drowning.
 * Everybody Smokes
 * Gargle Blaster: The film contains an extremely famous (to French audiences, anyway) example of this trope, in which the various characters partake of a bootleg hooch their gang used to distribute. "We had to stop making it," one of them explains, "because consumers were going blind. It got us in no end of trouble."
 * Gratuitous English: Various untranslated English phrases (usually horribly mispronounced) pepper the dialogues, and Jean the majordomo affects to speak English in order to look more like a British butler.
 * Hollywood Silencer: It actually doesn't even make a "fwip" sound, but a barely audible "beep".
 * Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Volfoni brothers.
 * Reformed Criminal: The majordomo is a former burglar, whom the Mexican caught red-handed as he was trying to force open his safe. In compensation, he was forced to work for a while as unpaid help, and when the time was up, decided to keep the job.
 * Shout-Out: The kitchen scene is a reference to Key Largo.
 * Sounding It Out: Fernand with the Mexican's telegram.
 * Wild Teen Party: Patricia throws one with her friends, which explains why the house is out of regular booze by the time the kitchen scene takes place.