Very well executed

The greatest movie ever made..!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

At first sight, it may look like a comedy thriller from the late sixties, in the line of GAMBIT. And Bryan forges was not a real crime film maker. And Michael Caine was for this kind of British heist movies the same Gary Cooper was for westerns. So, I repeat, this film is not a comedy. It's a drama thriller with some romantic involvements. The heist sequence is a pure jewel, thanks to the terrific editing that reminds a little the Godfather trilogy, a couple of years later, concerning the climaxes sequences. And don't forget the John Barry's score, and the Sirley Basset song too.An underrated must see.

All of the sexual politics - which is what this piece is REALLY about - has dated to the point where it's farcical now. But this movie is still worth watching for...The Heist. The family piles into the Merc 600 and heads for town to attend a concert, leaving the servants behind to listen to it on the radio.What we then get, is a sequence where the legendary John Barry (Forbes convinced him to make one of his RARE appearances) steps up onto the podium to conduct his own Rodrigo-style concerto, with a lovely woman playing solo guitar, while Caine and co do their botched robbery (in the real World, they usually are) back at the family's house.And of course, by switching back and forth from the concert to the house, The Job gets a SOUNDTRACK! Then, when the piece is over, the family gets BACK into their Merc and returns HOME - PASSING the escaping heisters (is that a word? I'm sure the SpellChecker will say no).But what I LOVE about this sequence is the sheer IMPRACTICALITY of the whole thing. Like the bit where Caine DROPS two floors and catches a window-sill with his FINGER-TIPS. His arms are at full stretch, which means it would have been IMPOSSIBLE!And what about the concert itself? Barry's concerto is shown as being the ONLY item on the programme - and it lasts (in REAL TIME) just SEVENTEEN MINUTES! Whoever heard of a concert that only lasted seventeen minutes?And the family don't even go ON somewhere afterwards (like a restaurant or club). Apparently, they BOOKED tickets, got DRESSED up, TRAVELED into town, PARKED up, got to their seats, sat - then REVERSED the process - for a SEVENTEEN MINUTE CONCERT. BONKERS!!!You've GOT to love it.

It's a shame this movie was such a failure, because subsequently one of the greatest 60's film scores I've ever heard has been buried along with it. John Barry has never done finer work, and even appears on-camera to conduct one of the brilliant pieces he composed. If you ever get a chance to see this film on TV, and you get bored by it, just leave the sound on. You'll get quite a treat.

Michael Caine plays a typically taciturn cat-burglar hooking up with a shady couple to pull off some posh country-house robberies in this atmospheric thriller set amongst Europe's aristocrats. Some nice scenery and a few tense robbery scenes fill in between a complex relationship story at the centre of things, as Caine has an affair with his gay employer/partner's wife. Interesting, a bit weird but not enough for cult interest, no classic but a good little movie.