hyped garbage

Excellent adaptation.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"A Man Could Get Killed" is an American production, but it has a dry wit that puts it closer to the British school of comedy. It's mildly amusing, though certainly nothing phenomenal. One of its distinguishing qualities is the location shooting around Lisbon (but there is NO Rome whatsoever, a strange inaccuracy in Leonard Maltin's usually dependable guide); another is Melina Mercouri, who, besides looking at least a decade younger than her age at the time (she was in her mid-forties!), is also clearly one of the best actresses to appear in this sort of "fluffy" fare, and brings her distinctive voice and joie de vivre to her role. The rest of the cast also works well, the plot has its share of twists, and the ending makes perfect use of the famous "Strangers In The Night" melody. **1/2 out of 4.

When I was in high school I played in our school orchestra, and one of the pieces we regularly performed was the popular song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "Strangers in the Night". On the sheet music written in fine print under the title were the words, "From the 1966 Universal motion picture 'A Man Could Get Killed'". It sounded like it might be a spy movie because of the year it was released, and being a fan of spy movies I eventually did some research on what the film is about - a fortune in smuggled diamonds sought by spy versus spy versus average guy mistaken for a spy (kind of like Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest"). I hate what they call "spy spoofs" which are disrespectful to the genre and don't take romantic heroism seriously (and which lack the admiring parody found in the television series "Get Smart"), but this is not that tongue-in-cheek "camp" stuff. It's a movie with a serious plot yet with loads of humor, and that's a totally different animal.The cast and the Portuguese locations sounded great, so I started looking for a DVD of this gem I had missed. I couldn't find one anywhere, and I looked and looked in every place I could think of! Why this wonderful movie has been neglected is beyond me, but at last I did find a DVD on an obscure online auction site and the seller shipped it to my USA home from Europe. I am thankful, because I absolutely loved this movie when I finally got a chance to see it.James Garner and Melina Mercouri are the "strangers in the night". Sandra Dee, Tony Franciosa, Robert Coote and all the cast are very enjoyable to watch, and the plot is fun! I hadn't seen Melina Mercouri in her famous role in "Never On Sunday" (1960), but I had seen her in "Topkapi" (1964). It was long ago and I didn't remember much about her except that she seemed intense. When she appeared on the screen in "A Man Could Get Killed" she struck me as the kind of husky-voiced foreign woman who is both laid-back and excitable at the same time. To date her would be like having a date with a Soviet commissar or something. Yet as the movie progressed she really began to allure me, and she became just wonderful! I fell in love with her, as James Garner's character secretly does too. This leads up to the final scene of the movie, which is simply unforgettable.I realize that everybody has their tastes and maybe for you this caper movie wouldn't be anything special, but my wish is for those of you who would be inclined to like it the same pleasure I had viewing it! I also want it to be made more widely available so it will finally get the recognition it deserves.

I was shocked when the Academy Award Show mentioned that both Tony Franciosa and Sandra Dee died during the year. They co-starred in one of my favorite movies, A Man Could Get Killed.How the hell could they be dead? They seemed like kids to me. I guess you live long enough most people start to seem like kids. But these were special to me. They gave me pleasure with their performances in an excellent movie.Franciosa especially. I became a fan of his for life. He played a native street hustler/smuggler in Lisbon. His accent sounded believable to me. But then Sandra Dee came along.Wait a minute.Let's start at the beginning.James Garner and Melina Mercouri starred in this comedy/action-adventure. (According to an English website Robert Coote starred. Tell them to take their cooties and go home.) Garner plays an American businessman who is mistaken by everybody for a super-secret British agent on the trail of smuggled diamonds. When Coote, supposedly his liaison at the British Embassy meets him at the Lisbon airport, the car intended for him is blown up. No matter how much Garner protests, all of which are accepted as cover for his actual mission, he is then transported into a world of scheming, dangerous, underworld characters.First among these is the fabulous Melina Mercouri playing the amorous, amoral, ungrieving widow of a recently killed gangster. It is great fun for us to see how much fun she has in this role. She flirts with Garner at the funeral of her husband.Tony Franciosa, totally charming in his guise as a Portuguese hustler, attaches himself to Garner. Sandra Dee, the archetypical Southern California beach girl appears and exposes Franciosa. They had been connected in America. But Franciosa's exposition is that he is an American hustler, not Portuguese. Not much change there.The four of them are then off on a life or death quest to find the smuggled diamonds. It is a fun trip. Garner, straight and proper, is continuously agitated by Mercouri's delightful lack of morals.In one memorable scene, the bad guys tell the two of them to strip so they can be searched. While Garner tries to defend her honor, Mercouri eagerly begins to comply. She begins by removing her false eyelashes.This is a fun romp with charismatic stars and great chemistry between them. Much of the fine background music throughout became the ballad, "Strangers in the Night." See it if you get a chance.And say goodbye to Sandra Dee and Tony Franciosa.

I saw this film several times, and really thought it was great. James Garner put in a superb performance as did Melina Mercouri. In fact, the chemistry between all of the performers seemed natural and lent to making a hilariously preposterous plot all the more believable.Try as I might, I can't understand why it was never released on VHS or DVD. I thought the film to be very entertaining. It must have been popular, based on the number of times it was later shown on TV. It seemed too, to be an excellent showcase for James Garner's talents as an actor.If you get a chance to see the film, please don't hesitate. It was not only very entertaining, but it is a fine representation of the movies of the day - original, intelligent, romantic and funny all at once. It had a quality about it that is sadly lacking in films today.