O Bandido dos Olhos Azuis

Excellent delitto thriller starring Franco Nero as a middle-aged, brown-eyed cripple who works as an accountant for a bank. Little do his employers realize it's a disguise that he has perfected so that he can rob them blind and in the process flashing his natural blue eyes to throw them off the track. Unfortunately for him his plan isn't quite perfect and suddenly several people start to catch on. Very well executed plot twists with Nero turning in a top-notch performance.

A rather slow-paced Italian crime drama that's unlike the rest of the ones I've seen. This one stars Franco Nero, as per normal, but what's different is that he actually plays the criminal here. He undertakes an elaborate ruse by masquerading as a crippled old man in an office building, secretly planning the whole time to rob the place in his genuine character of an athletic young man. There's not much more to it than that, and attempts at character work only serve to slow the pace down. There are better and worse films out there.

This film suffers tremendously from- by lack of an official or better term - the "Well, duh!" syndrome. Basically, this means the script takes an awful long time to mysteriously build up towards something that everybody already knows because it's mentioned in every simplest plot synopsis and even in the damn title! Franco Nero, Italy's finest cinematic export product, is "The Blue-Eyed Bandit". That's what the title says, and it's also unmistakably illustrated via the DVD cover image. And yet, for the first 40-45 minutes, we mainly just witness how Nero's character - Renzo Dominici - pretends to be grey and pitiable banking clerk who sits alone in his miserably small office and stumbles out of the building as the last employee because of his (fake) crippled leg. Some explanation and background regarding his masterplan to rob his own employer is great, I'm not denying that, but it takes too long and features far too many dull moments. When Dominici eventually does execute his heist, "The Blue-Eyed Bandit" turns into a reasonably entertaining and compelling crime-caper. Since his waterproof plan apparently wasn't so waterproof after all, Dominici has to deal with (read: get rid of) a handful of annoying persons that know his true identity and want to blackmail him. There are a couple of notable action and suspense moments in the last twenty minutes, but the only real reasons to recommend "The Blue-Eyed Bandit" are Franco Nero's performance, Dalila Di Lazzaro's beauty and Ennio Morricone's music.

Packed full of anti-action and non-thrills, The Blue-Eyed Bandit is only saved by Franco Nero's performance. Other than that, there's not much else going for it at all.

Franco is plays a crippled old man working a mundane accounts job in an insurance firm. Derided by his colleagues and the rest of the staff in the building, he's always last out after work, and doesn't seem to want to mingle with folk, including the nymphomaniac dinner lady.

What people don't know is that Franco is literally playing a crippled old man, because in the safety of his own home, he takes off his brown contact lenses, wig, and cripple shoes and becomes buff, daring Franco Nero the heist planner. We all know he's up to something, and it looks like that something is a huge payload courtesy of that firm he works for. Franco also has mother problems and regularly goes to visit his senile mother in an old folks home, even though he wishes she was dead for ruining his life.

I'm not sure which way Nero's character is meant to swing but there's a sub plot with him visiting a sauna and striking up a strange relationship with the guy who works there. Watch out Nero - he wants to turn your brown eye blue! Both the mother and the sanua guy will come back to haunt Nero after he pulls of his heist. He makes a big deal of making sure the victims know he's got blue eyes, but still makes enough mistakes that there's at least three people in the building cottoned on to his ruse.

The problem with this film is that even though Nero puts in a good turn as the quick-changing thief, most of the time not much happens expect Nero pretending to be an old man or people trying to catch him out. There's barely any action to speak of at all and even the heist is a bit of a wet blanket. The police sketch of him is quite funny though as it resembles Nero-lookalike Terence Hill rather than Nero himself.

Apart from that, my wife happen to catch a bit of this while passing by and noted that Franco Nero is saying his lines in English while everyone else is obviously speaking Italian, and the film was probably more likely aimed at the Italian market, so why was Franco Nero speaking English. Stranger still, the print I watched was recorded from Italian television and yet was an English dub. Reality is tangible when it comes to the extremes of Italian cinema.