Bob is the playboy

Twenty years ago, Bob Montagne ( Roger Duchenne ) was in prison after a failed bank robbery. Since then, he has been living in the Montmartre district of Paris, where with his decency and gentlemanly behavior he has gained considerable authority among the inhabitants of the quarter, among which the owners of local restaurants and bars, card players, petty criminals and girls of easy virtue predominate. The local police chief, Commissioner Ledru ( Guy DeCable ), to whom Bob once saved his life, has great respect for Bob.

In one of the cafes, Bob meets a young girl named Anna ( Isabelle Corey ), who does not have her own housing, and she often sleeps with men just for the night. Bob gives her money for a hotel, and a few days later he brings her to his apartment and introduces his young friend and protégé named Paolo (Daniel Cauchy). Very soon, a close relationship begins between Anna and Paolo. On the other hand, Bob refuses to help local pimp Mark (Gerard Bure) when he faces a prison sentence for beating a prostitute. As a result, Mark finds himself in the police, and in order to avoid getting into jail, he agrees to become a scammer.

Bob's main passion is gambling; he is ready to play various games at any time of the day, anywhere, but he is not always lucky. After another setback in the game, Bob is on the verge of a financial collapse.

Once Bob's acquaintance, an experienced teddy bear named Roger (Andre Gare), meets in a casino in the city of Deauville a certain Jean (Claude Serval), who once was a member of one of the small gang groups, but then retired and got the job of a croupier. From Roger, he learns that in the casino safe, large amounts of cash accumulate every morning after the end of the game. Roger shares this information with Bob, who decides to rob the casino.

Bob and Roger find a person who is ready to finance the robbery for half of the total booty, then begin to develop a plan and assemble a team. They come to Deauville and conduct a thorough inspection of the casino, recording on paper all the important details. Then Roger meets with Jean, and by blackmailing him and promising a big fee, he forces him to get the exact plan of the first floor and find out the brand and number of the safe. Jean brings Roger documents, receives money and a new task - when robbing, turn off the elevator and give a signal that will serve as the beginning of the operation. When Jean buys jewelry for her money, she guesses where the money came from, and demands that he go to Roger and demand a significant increase in the fee.

Bob invites Paolo to accept the robbery, he happily agrees. At night, he tells Anna that he will soon get the money for her, since the next day he takes part in the robbery of a casino in Deauville.

Roger is working out the technology of opening the safe, Bob gathers a large team for the robbery and provides detailed second-by-second instruction on who and what will do at the time of the robbery. First, he shows everything on the drawn plan on the board, and then places people on the ground, showing everyone his maneuver.

There follows an insertion episode, which shows how the robbery according to Bob was supposed to go.

In the evening, Bob in one of the restaurants sees Anna, goes to dance with her, but does not ask to break up with Paolo and move to him. After his departure, Anna remains to entertain customers, Mark sits down to her, who offers to go to another restaurant. Anna ends the evening in Mark's bed. She boasts that Paolo will get rich soon, as he and Bob are going to rob a casino in Deauville. Mark hurries to report this information to the police. Anna realizes that she blabbed and was rushing to Bob to tell him about it.

Bob leaves Anna the key to his apartment, and he quickly finds Roger and Paolo to discuss the situation. Paolo goes in search of Mark, and at that moment when he calls the police from a street vending machine to report the details of the robbery plan, he kills him with a pistol.

Jean and his wife are looking for Roger and Bob to demand more money, but they don’t find it, and then they decide to call the police to report the robbery. However, the commissioner is not in place, and then the wife forbids Jean to take part in the robbery. Commissioner Ledru is trying to warn Bob from participating in the robbery, bypasses all the famous bars and cafes, as a result, not finding him, passes through a familiar barmaid that he knows about Deauville. In the end, the inspector gives instructions to take measures to protect the casino from robbery.

Meanwhile, Bob puts on a tuxedo and at half past one in the night enters the casino. He should receive a signal from Jean that everything is in order, but Jean is not. Without paying attention to it, Bob goes to the game room and starts playing. Time flies completely unnoticed, Bob is very lucky, he raises bets more and more and wins more, goes to a special cabinet, continues to play there, and as a result he wins a huge amount of money. At this moment, it is five in the morning. Raiders drive up to the casino in cars. Fascinated by the game, Bob does not have time to go out to meet them and stop the robbery. A police squad appears, an intense skirmish begins, during which Paolo is injured and dies in Bob's arms. The Commissioner handcuffs Bob, and in the meantime, several employees take out huge packages of money and put them in the trunk of Ledru's car. Bob sits there too. On the way, Ledru explains that Bob could face up to five years for attempted robbery, with a good lawyer this term can be reduced to three years, and if you can’t prove the malicious intent in his actions, then, perhaps, everything will cost him without trial ...

• Roger Duchenne - Bob Montagne
• Isabelle Corey - Anna
• Daniel Cauchy - Paolo
• Guy Decable - Commissioner Ledru
• Andre Gare - Roger
• Gerard Bure - Mark
• Claude Serval - Jean, croupier

Vincent Canby in the New York Times in 1981 noted: “ Melville’s love for American gangster films has probably never been shown so entertainingly and witty as in Bob the Life-Burner, which was only the fourth film directed by another before he got access to big budgets and big stars such as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon in his subsequent films ^[2] .

In 2002, director Neil Jordan made a remake of the movie The Good Thief , starring Nick Nolty .

• Bob is a playboy on the IMDB website  
• Bob - Playmaker on Allmovie