Grande caldo per il racket della droga

Maybe this movie got chopped up a bit after its original release, as I've read, but it was not a model of clarity to begin with. By sheer chance, I saw it when it was having its world premiere in the summer of 1970, and I couldn't always follow what was going on.

I was a college student visiting downtown Miami for the first time when I noticed the marquee. I knew nothing about the "Travis McGee" character. The only reason I walked into the theater was because I had never seen a world premiere before.

I couldn't keep a handle on the plot, and I think that weakened the impact of the ending for me. Still, I was favorably impressed overall, because the action was so gritty and realistic. I especially liked the performances of Rod Taylor and William Smith, who were both well known to me. Their big fight scene was as memorable as everybody says.

Suzy Kendall, whom I had never heard of before, was easy on a young man's eyes. But her character was undefined. She seemed like a decorative jewel that men were willing to die for, and I never got a sense of her as a real person.

Since that afternoon so many years ago, I have had the pleasure of reading several Travis McGee novels. I like them very much. If I ever wind up seeing the movie again, maybe I'll understand it better.

I saw this movie 30 years and the memory of the Climatic fight is still in my memory banks. Probably because I went back to see it with my friends. Nowadays fights scene like this are commonplace, but back then this fights only close comparison was Bond's fight in From russia with love. I rented it about five years ago and was disappointed to find that it was an edited tv version with the best scenes cut. A restored version of this movie is a time capsule of Florida, fighting and Females in the late 60's. And a darn good yarn.

This is indeed a good movie--a tidy, well-acted and -directed thriller with a good "take" on Travis McGee by the rock-solid and dependable Rod Taylor. But it is a tough one to get to see in its entirety, as some of the other reviewers have noted. Even the commercial prints have a running time of 91 minutes, and they are obviously and clumsily cut (here's a clue: the background music and sound jump drastically). No doubt this is because the violence is graphic for a film of this vintage, although that doesn't explain why it almost impossible to find a complete 93-minute copy here in the 21st century. I found one through a guy who knew a guy and so on--a Dutch copy with Dutch subtitles--and after 30 years of poking around (I was doing other things, too, during these decades) I finally got to see the whole movie. And it was worth it, as it almost always is to see the entire work, as the director (Clouse's next film was "Enter the Dragon") intended it. Some might think 2 minutes out of a film is no big deal (although they might gripe if you handed them a novel with 2 or 3 percent of its pages torn out) but this is too good a movie to snip. And although there have been bigger, longer, bloodier, more you-name-it fights, no two men on screen have ever looked like they are really, desperately trying to hurt each other as much as Rod Taylor and William Smith in the climactic fight in this movie. If you can find it, watch it. Good luck.

This "Tough as nails" John MacDonald novel was filmed at the perfect time in American Film History. Rod Taylor (an Aussie) who starred in many American films (as well as high support in GIANT and others) plays Travis MaGee, the lead, with the beautiful, intelligent and TALENTED Suzy Kendall (who nobody I know ever heard of), even though she was in TO SIR WITH LOVE and had a "Julie Christie" kind of appeal in the Kingdom in the 1960's and 70's AND was married to Dudley Moore (ARTHUR) AFTER Tuesday Weld wss married to him. ANyway, Theo Bikel is great - this is like an old Bogie or John Garfield film from the 40's or 50's about corruption and honest, tough private eyes who AREN'T James Bond or TV private eyes who wait for Inger Stevens to save them.

Well-done, tough MacDonald story (well cast) and I'm not even sure if it's on Vid OR DVD. Check it out.

A great detective film. The usually underrated Rod Taylor gives a gripping performance, holding his own against scene stealer William Smith. The ending features one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed involving ,basically, only two men. I was not too framiliar with Travis McGee before this film but have since become a fan. And Suzy Kendall is always fun to look at