Load of rubbish!!

Don't Believe the Hype

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The only thing I can figure out from this melange is that Bryan Forbes was attempting to make a sort of Lord Of The Flies substituting adults for children but his talent was woefully short of his ambition. On the 'oooh' counter Forbes allowed Michael Caine to refer openly to Eric Portman as a 'queer'. This was irony on time-and-a-half because Portman was seriously gay off screen but like, say, Harry Andrews, a stream of 'macho' roles deflected viewer realization and Portman could quite happily have continued with 'rugged' roles indefinitely. John Barry turned in a wince-making extended piece which allowed Forbes to intercut it with the main heist sequence in which Caine and Portman silently break into the large, home of the mark, who is, of course, in the concert hall watching the performance. Any credulity achieved by the sequence is blown sky-high when the mark jumps into his car and returns to his home the INSTANT the last note fades away rather than socialising with his friends for at least ten or fifteen minutes. Not this time, Forbesy.

Michael Caine stars in the 1968 film Deadfall as a poker-faced, dare- devil, cat-burglar and love maker who tries his luck in exotic Spain. Agreeing to go in with a married couple on the next big job, Caine falls in love with the beautiful Fé Moreau (Giovanna Ralli) as lured secrets are revealed about her husband. The film blends picturesque shots of sunny Spain with intense close-ups of the never blinking Michael Caine and others. At 145 minutes, however, the plot appears to progress at a pedestrian pace with a great deal of frustratingly elusive dialogue. Caine carries the film on his own two shoulders with his brooding charisma, while the other actors are sadly lacking. There is some exciting action near the beginning of the film as Caine muscles his way through a classic heist, but it gently peters out into not so shocking revelations about the slimy looking husband in the tweed suit.

I knew if I came to the IMDb there would be the usual litany of "neglected gem" "undiscovered masterpiece" "not as bad as you've heard" that every bad and awful movie seems to get. No comprende, I'm afraid. This thing was critically lambasted and the public that bothered to see it hated it. Why? Because it STINKS. Bad script, pretentious and unnecessarily arty direction, a terrible performance by its female lead, and I could go on but why bother. This is part of a three Caine DVD release from Fox, and they're three of the worst movies ever made - I'm sure when I go look up the other two - Peeper and The Magus - that there will be more of "neglected gem" "undiscovered masterpiece" "not as bad as you've heard" from the great unwashed or the film school pedants. I mean, sorry, this is a BAD movie.

Michael Caine plays a typically taciturn cat-burglar hooking up with a shady couple to pull off some posh country-house robberies in this atmospheric thriller set amongst Europe's aristocrats. Some nice scenery and a few tense robbery scenes fill in between a complex relationship story at the centre of things, as Caine has an affair with his gay employer/partner's wife. Interesting, a bit weird but not enough for cult interest, no classic but a good little movie.