This tired B-movie is a French attempt to make an exciting caper flick, something along the lines of a Bond movie, but it fails from the outset with terrible production values and a stilted script that never works. The twist here is that every character is a villain, more or less. The rugged, Roger Moore-type hero is a safe cracker, the love interest is a gangster's daughter, there are guerrillas lurking in the woods and the rest of the characters are either criminals or corrupt governmental officials. It makes it hard to find somebody to root for, and as the hero, wooden Stafford just doesn't cut the mustard. Really, there isn't anybody interesting in this film, unless you include singer Serge Gainsbourg in a small role, and he's only fun because he's so embarrassed to be here.
The plot is the usual nonsense about a daring robbery, although it's so long-winded and slow-moving that you'll have lost interest long before it finally happens in the last twenty minutes. Until then, we get endless scenes of small-talk, some silly romance, some nice cars and one decent fist fight in the streets of an unknown city. The film is devoid of imagination, and indeed talent. The "big" action scenes at the film's climax are poorly-handled with some of the worst choreography I've seen, with soldiers supposedly being machine-gunned and just dropping down when the gun isn't even pointed near them.
Elsewhere, there are silly factual errors – people throwing gold bars to each other, lifting them on ropes, and finally using a pulley system to transport a massive tray of them onto a boat – I think the mast would have snapped with the weight, somehow – and a new type of explosive that reminded me of the one in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE. In all it's totally listless and without merit, real bottom of the barrel stuff, and I only awarded it an extra star for the cheesy jazz lounge music that definitely dates it as a sixties flick.
The plot is the usual nonsense about a daring robbery, although it's so long-winded and slow-moving that you'll have lost interest long before it finally happens in the last twenty minutes. Until then, we get endless scenes of small-talk, some silly romance, some nice cars and one decent fist fight in the streets of an unknown city. The film is devoid of imagination, and indeed talent. The "big" action scenes at the film's climax are poorly-handled with some of the worst choreography I've seen, with soldiers supposedly being machine-gunned and just dropping down when the gun isn't even pointed near them.
Elsewhere, there are silly factual errors – people throwing gold bars to each other, lifting them on ropes, and finally using a pulley system to transport a massive tray of them onto a boat – I think the mast would have snapped with the weight, somehow – and a new type of explosive that reminded me of the one in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE. In all it's totally listless and without merit, real bottom of the barrel stuff, and I only awarded it an extra star for the cheesy jazz lounge music that definitely dates it as a sixties flick.