The Specialists

The Specialists (Les Spécialistes, 1985) is Patrice Leconte's French crime caper, ready to watch online on iFILM. Two convicts break free during a transfer between prisons.

The escape is Brandon's idea: he's facing life, while his partner Carella had just a year left to serve. Too late to undo it now — and Brandon already has a bigger prize in mind, a brazen raid on a Nice casino worth three billion francs. What follows is a flight through the Verdon Gorge, shelter at a remote farm with a widow named Laura who carries her own grudge against the police, and a shootout with the casino's owners. The closer the finish gets, the clearer it becomes to Carella that his partner is not who he claims to be.

Leconte plays it light and tight, leaning on two charming leads, Bernard Giraudeau and Gérard Lanvin, and turned the result into one of the biggest French box-office hits of the mid-eighties. Nobody's reaching for depth here — just pace, buddy-movie humor and a final turn that flips the whole table. Stream The Specialists (1985) online on iFILM.