Set in the late 1960s, the story opens with aging hood Gustave Minda breaking out of prison with two younger men. He has to think long and hard about his ability to make the jump to safety after one of his colleagues misses the mark and falls to his bloody death. Aged in prison and serving a goodly chunk of a life sentence, Gustave is a man who has to think a little more now that he is getting up there in age. The titular second breath is as much a last gasp as a regrouping. French star Daniel Auteuil has a face with the right combination of creases and two day stubble that the story is written clearly across is face. He is trying to get back to his girl Manouche (Monica Bellucci as a steely blonde) and pull off a multimillion dollar gold heist to put them on easy street. Complications abound however. The police are combing Paris looking for him and but the mastermind behind the obligatory ‘one last job’ is the brother of one of Gustave’s enemies currently embroiled in a turf war that resulted in a murder in the club where Manouche works. Stress is applied from all sides, especially when Gustave is tricked (the man is more stoic and loyal than particularly smart) into giving up some of his accomplices. Proving his loyalty and earning his reputation back then takes him to a level of desperation which drives an inevitable bloody and violent climax of the film.

Also essential to any great crime potboiler are a collection of great character actors spewing copious amounts of hard boiled dialogue alternating between the determined earnestness of Gustave and the wry cynicism of chief Commissaire Blot Played by unassuming (mousey even) character actor Michel Blanc as a nevertheless larger than life presence, the Commissaire has an awareness of the criminal reality in Paris and his own powerlessness in really making a dent in the usual channels. This frustration channels out in a series of rat-a-tat yet bleak witticisms whenever he is on screen and the film really crackles when he shows up. Fans of extreme French cinema get the treat of Philippe Nahon as a sadistic police lieutenant with a nasty technique for interrogation. Every nook and cranny of the film is filled with unusual looking faces.

Hearing toughs plot and posture and play in the lush set design and cinematography is the type of separate universe building that is cherished by fans of the genre. Unfortunately the cost of all the pageantry is the relationship between Gustave and Manouche which falls on the actors conveying things without words in a film that lives and dies by its words. Manouche is often put on the sidelines while the men do their dealings. If only the love sequences had in emotion what the action scenes had in baroque flair.
Ultimately, Le Deuxième Souffle is more about the appreciating the exercise and visual experiment that Alain Corneau and cohorts have put together. This may strain a bit of patience at a lengthy 155 minutes, but for those who like the gloriously artificial nature of the genre and the separate universe of the night that noir has always embodied, the opportunity is offer here to dream deeply.