AllMovie

The most powerful officers of a bank are implicated in a financial scandal, despite their efforts to disassociate themselves from it. When the top brass fire Henri Rainier (Jean-Louis Trintignant) because one of his clients has been accused of fraud, he doesn't take it lying down. He knows that the man who actually approved the client's loans was the bank's director. He must expose these and other shady financial transactions by his superiors in order to avoid being framed by them. This straightforward drama, which depicts the anxious situation of a man without allies, caught, despite his best efforts, in the throes of a vast land fraud, is based on a true story and was inexplicably very popular in France. It won Césars for "Best Screenplay" and "Best Director," and the Prix Louis Delluc, a venerable annual prize given by French journalists for the best French film of the year.