Though he's an inmate and wears the requisite white prisoner jacket, Notarbartolo radiates a sunny Italian charm. Notarbartolo nods and smiles faintly, the laugh lines crinkling around his blue eyes. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian prison turn to look. About a billion, inflation being what it is.Leonardo Notarbartolo strolls into the prison visiting room trailing a guard as if the guy were his personal assistant. Score one for the pudgy but determined middle-aged.Ĭrime pays: nicely. It looks like Caine might have a heart attack trying to push that cart fast enough to beat that timing, but he pulls it off. Turns out a ‘few’ means the entire inventory.Ĭlassic heist moment: Surveillance systems have gotten pretty sophisticated by 2008 and dodging them involves taking advantage of a technological glitch in computer timing. A janitor, played by Michael Caine, convinces her to team up to steal a few diamonds on her way out. The heist in Flawless revolves around a woman for a change, Demi Moore as an ambitious but frustrated manager in the London Diamond Corporation in 1960. You’re now in the heart of bustling, present-day downtown Manhattan. Final shot: the ring on a woman’s hand as she chats gaily with her girlfriends. Cut to two more hands pressing the stone to a diamond wheel as water rushes over it, forming it into a faceted point. This one opens with a demonstration of the unglamorous beginnings of a world-class diamond: a close-up of two hands sifting rough gems in muddy water, putting aside a pebble that looks like a chunk of common quartz. Let’s just say, this movie is in the cinéma verité tradition. No such thing as happy endings. They solidify their bond with an exchange of cigarettes.Ĭrime pays: I wouldn’t want to give away the ending. Even Yves Montaud who plays a cop-turned-crook with a serious case of DTs can pull it together by lighting up.Ĭlassic heist moment: Thief number one finds thief number two in the trunk of his car. ![]() Exchange and lighting of cigarettes serves as a second language. No one breaks a sweat or drops his repartee, no matter how many guns are pointed at his head. It’s the movie you’d end up with if the ultra-cool chain-smoking Bogart of the Maltese Falcon went to the ultra-cool sixties Paris of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. This is a long movie entirely about men – don’t expect to see jewelry on the body here – but it moves right along. When the thieves finally reach the building they’re casing, the sign reads Mauboussin. ![]() Le Cercle Rouge (1970)Īn hour and a quarter goes by before you find out the heist in this movie has anything to do with jewelry. Cary catches the impostor, Grace ends up with Cary and his villa on the Riviera. Reel to real moment: Cary wiping the sweat off his hands as Grace speeds around hairpin turns on the cliffs of the French Riviera, a creepy foreshadowing of the accident that killed the actress thirty years later.Ĭrime pays: For everyone but the real criminal. “Diamonds… the only thing in the world you can’t resist.” FYI, the diamonds in that necklace were paste. He turns out to be faking his return to crime, which means it’s okay for Grace to marry him in the end and move to his seaside villa with her mother, who couldn’t care less if her jewels are stolen, as long as she’s insured.Ĭlassic love scene: Grace kissing Cary slowly while her diamond necklace glitters in the dark, reflecting the fireworks bursting over the Seine. Grant, at his suave best, meets Grace Kelly, as the ultimate cool blonde who seduces him on the French Riviera. Most famous of jewelry heist flicks, To Catch a Thief gives you Cary Grant as the Cat, France’s most famous jewel thief, a sort of Spider Man in black. In Hitchcock’s tongue-in-cheek fifties-era capers, crime never leads to profit but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. A jewelry heist is the ultimate glamour crime. Most good heist movies make you root for the bad guy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |