Doubles masques et agents doubles

The title and its introductory headline tells the whole story: everyone here is a fake, and the only innocent ones are stupid enough not to see them through but to just follow their tricks like sheep into a slaughterhouse. Although the dialog to start with is excellent, but the intrigue is constantly getting weaker and cheaper, almost like turning into a bad James Bond copy yarn of tiresome exertions. The intrigue starts to falter when the lady enters the plot and the agent doesn't see what should have been obvious from the start: if there is anyone you cannot trust in a political thriller game, it's an acting woman. That's elementary. The circus people turn out to be surprisingly honest after all, and it's a pity that Tutte Lermkow had to be shot. Michel Piccoli delivers the ultimate comment to the dirty business: "I hope they all kill each other." At least they try, but they all turn out more or less professional failures.

Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli and Jack Hawkins were my reasons for seeing the film. Disappointment! All three are wasted in a banal, uninteresting, predictable story. Just a waste of time.

There's an assassination and a change of power in a Middle East country. Suddenly the British oil rights are at risk. So they get Jack Hawkins to kidnap the prince, and he hires old WWII associate Cliff Robertson to help him out. As usually happens in these caper movies, things don't go according to plan.

Robertson was born in 1923, so he certainly was of an age to serve in the Second World War. He also looks far too young for the role, in his early 30s at the latest. Still, he does a good job, as does everyone, even though this busted caper movie is not terribly engrossing. The satirical edge is a little weak.

I suspect the story got a bit muddled. It was originally intended for Rex Harrison, but he was busy, so they got in Hawkins, and decided they needed an American. Sometimes a lot of rewrites polish a script. Sometimes it makes it worse.

Lots of intrigue in this plot about kidnapping a ruling dignitary in the Near East. My main reason for watching is to see Jack Hawkins whom I always admired. There's some violence of course, and a shootout, but it's to be expected in this kind of movie. A good show.

I watched it to see Robertson, Hawkins and Mell in a thriller, directed by Basil Dearden, and was very disappointed.

The story gets confused, you don't understand what is going on, on which side everyone is.

The kid is a bloody pain in the arse, an arrogant brat who thinks he owns everybody. I would give him a jolly good spanking.

Spain is portrayed as a third world country.

The baddies are a bunch of weirdos; what is a dwarf doing there?

A total misfire. It's hard to believe that this was made by the same man who directed "Victim", presenting gays as normal human beings in a time when homosexuality was a crime.