A Brilliant Conflict

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

That's all I could take before I tapped out! When Odd Job started speaking Spanish that was it for me.

When a jewel encrusted gold scepter is found off the coast of Ibiza, it attracts a lot of attention from some unsavory characters. There are several groups of would-be thieves who want to steal the valuable artifact from the local museum. As luck would have it, all of the people vying to steal the scepter just happen to plan their robberies for the same night. Before sunrise, there will be multiple fake scepters in play, only adding to the confusion.While I would never call Operation Gold (or Baleric Caper) a great movie, I had a pretty good time with it. It's the kind of movie that can be fun if you don't take things overly serious. It's basically a Euro-heist film with a comedic twist. I enjoy most heist films, but generally don't care for 60s Euro-comedies. I find many of these films too broad and slapstick for my taste. You need look no further than Secret Agent Black Forest (I think that was his name) in Operation Gold for an example of what I'm talking about. But I'm happy to say that a lot of the comedy here actually worked on me. I laughed out loud a time or two when the scepters were changing hands every few minutes in the final act. Fortunately, when the comedy doesn't work, there's enough action to keep things moving along. The pacing is good with very few moments that I would call dull. There are also plenty of spy-type gadgets to keep things interesting. The self-driving smart car and the levitating crate were a bit much, but I did get a kick out of the magnetic boots. The Ibiza scenery is another plus. Mediterranean locations always work on me. Finally, the cast was better than I expected. Bond alum Daniela Bianchi may be the name, but she's not in the movie long enough to be the real star. Venantino Venantini, Mirelle Darc, and Marilu Tolo stand out and make the film for me.

OPERATION GOLD is a cheap and dumb rip-off of the James Bond series, made as a French/Italian/Spanish co-production and filmed all around the Mediterranean. It's certainly a sunny film to look at but in terms of quality it really isn't very good at all. Instead of being funny it merely comes across as a low rent imitation, complete with exaggerated action and over the top dialogue.The main character plays a secret agent on the hunt for a stolen scepter, but of course everybody else including various spies and criminals also want to get their hands on it. Cue lots of nonsense action scenes and nubile women in bikinis parading around and flirting with the hero. I found the film devoid of laughs and originality; it felt like the director simply watched a couple of the Connery movies and used that as inspiration before he started the camera rolling.