Madame Bijoux

Though there were times when I enjoyed Donald Sutherland's cheeky, rebellious, style of characterisation, for the most part I never really understood why he was such a success. Versatile he isn't, and here though easily stealing the limelight, he does very little with a weak plot, a thinly spread story and a co-star who smiles a lot! He is insurance investigator "Andy" who robs a gangster of a necklace which he then uses to try to lure "Paula" (Jennifer O'Neill) into disclosing her secrets as a highly effective jewel fencer. Of course, she isn't that dumb - even if she is the crook in question, and so for the next ninety minutes we plays a sort of cat and mouse game between the two that errs all too often on the side of predictable romance. It's all rather flat and by-the-numbers with an underwhelming Robert Duvall and an out of sorts Patrick Magee both failing to add much lustre to this not very shiny drama. It's got made for television written all over it, and I was frankly rather bored by it all. Maybe fans of Sutherland might enjoy it to complete a list, but it has little else to recommend it, sorry.

Dr. Bombay is wrong about this film being made for TV.

It was always intended to be a feature, produced by the General Electric subsidiary, Tomorrow Entertainment. It suffered along the way from problems with the script and was delayed several times.

Alan Trustman, a lawyer and the author of the film, remained mostly in Boston during development, which hindered the process of fixing the script.

While Tomorrow Entertainment did indeed produce many fine TV movies, Lady Ice was one of two features developed by the company. The other was Gravy Train, a bit of cult classic. After the limited success of these films the company concentrated on TV movies.

A made-for-TV `Thomas Crown Affair (1968)' tries hard to duplicate the Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway chemistry, using Donald Sutherland and Jennifer O'Neill in this watery version.

Role reversal sets O'Neill as the wealthy jewel thief, hunted seductively by insurance investigator Sutherland..who works most of the film in shirts open to the navel…Ahh, the 70's!!!

O'Neill is beautiful and stylish, drives fast cars, swims unclothed and stays away from complex sentences, while Sutherland smokes those little thin cigars and from time to time falls back on his ‘Hawkeye' grin. There is a nice turn by Jon Cypher as the heavy. Soap opera vet Eric Braeden gets some on-screen time as does, of all people Robert Duvall as the straight-arrow cop.

Fun for a lark. Connoisseurs of the genre only please .

Jennifer O'Neill became a star as the distant object of Gary Grimes' voyeuristic attention in the wonderfully nostalgic Summer of '42. That film showed that she could be captivating when viewed from afar, but her career went off the rails while she was still in her twenties owing to a shortage of technical chops. Simply put, she had the looks of a movie star but not the presence. Here we see Jennifer driving around Miami in a 1970 Maserati Ghibli, taking a late night swim, sunning herself in a bikini, flying off to the Bahamas... Mansions, speedboats, planes and jewels provide the rest of Lady Ice's eye candy. It's all very appealing to look at, but herein lies the problem. The movie is all surface gloss with nothing underneath to drive the wheels. Someone forgot to tell the producers that heist movies are crime thrillers, and crime thrillers are plot driven. They need tight pacing, high stakes, plot twists, none of which appear in this film. The only action is provided by a little routine fast driving. Otherwise, everything meanders along in predictable fashion. Some greedy people are interested in some jewels. No surprises here. The producers could have recut Lady Ice as a four minute music video or an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and lost nothing.

Is this a great movie? Well, no, it's not. But what's really amazing here is that we are able to see it at all. Thanks, Prime! As a kid in the 70s and 80s, and continuing on as a young adult into the 90s, I was pretty sure I had watched just about every action/adventure/cops&robbers flick that came out between 1960 and 1995. At least the ones that had any kind of a star. I had never even heard of this one until I saw it available included with Prime. It's the kind of movie I would have loved as a kid. At this point, I'm sophisticated enough in my judgement of a film to realize that this one is a mess. And while many of the plot points don't seem to make a lot of sense, the film moves along steadily towards what you imagine will be some kind of an interesting conclusion. The ending, along with many other parts of the film is a bit strange, but somehow satisfying. Not much of this movie goes as expected. It's uneven, but it does keep you more interested that a standard formulaic offering. I really enjoyed the performances of the three main stars. Donald Sutherland is sure fun to watch, even if the character did something no real person would ever do about every ten minutes. Jennifer O'Neill has a great energy in every movie I've seen her in. Robert Duvall! He was super solid in a movie where everything else was kind of all over the place. To really enjoy a movie like this, a big part of it has to come from just wanting to see what was going on in the business in 1973. What did the world look like? How was everyone dressing? What were they driving? What were these actors doing in between making really good movies? If you've got an inquiring mind, and really want to know, check this movie out. If not, try something from the 90s.