Very well executed

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Memorable, crazy movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I wish this movie would appear in some streaming service. It's so much fun

A cast of seasoned professionals. Directed by Peter Yates, who gave us classics like "Robbery" and "Bullet". Screenplay by William Goldman, who gave us "Butch Cassidy" and "Marathon Man." Even the musical score: Ray Brown, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, Frank Rosolino, and Bud Shank.Yet, you put all the elements together and it's only mildly involving. It has its amusing moments but the suspense involved in pursuing a valuable gem through New York City seems to be dragged out. The gang steal it from the Brooklyn Museum. The guy who gets caught has swallowed it. "When did it next appear?" asks their employer, Moses Gunn, in his most dramatic and earnest baritone.It next appeared in a police station and the gang must bust into the station with diverting explosions in the streets. But it's not where it had been hidden. Then it gets complicated as Zero Mostel, as the father of one of the gang, is drawn into the affair and decides to steal the gem and be paid for it all alone. The hell with his son and his son's partners.Redford has never looked more handsome. Many people have remarked on how much he resembles me since he copied my careless-looking hair style. Some people of low taste have hinted that he may even be more handsome than I. Really, I don't mind his being so good looking. I hold no enmity towards him for it, except that I wish his face would melt.Redford is the lead and, unfortunately, his acting style is minimalist. He conveys an awful lot of information with a slight widening of his eyes or the mere hint of a frown. That's not what the role calls for. It's not what this silly movie calls for either. It needs a more expressive, less white bread actor like Robert De Niro, who handles comedy very well.The wisecracks aren't very witty. Some of the acting is overreach. And the gags that should make us laugh out loud -- landing a helicopter on the wrong roof -- don't shoot out the lights. For whatever reason, probably the finest moment in the film is its resolution, a tense scene in which Redford, with the aid of hypnosis, insinuates himself into a bank's vault, retrieves the errant gem from a safe deposit box, and tries to walk slowly, inconspicuously, upstairs, through the bank's lobby, and out its revolving door.He succeeds only seconds before the arrival of Zero Mostel and a bodyguard. As Redford paces along the sidewalk, still deliberately, he realizes that he's finally gotten the prize. The viewer is as relieved and cheerful as Redford, as his pace picks up, he breaks into a smile, and begins to lope through traffic. At this point, the band, which has hitherto been a succession of burps, chirps, and inquisitive whistles, builds into a cheerful Dixieland melody. The end really is a delight.

Has there ever been a heist film that was so much fun and yet also so unsatisfying? THE HOT ROCK is top-flight until the last five minutes, when it simply ends. Peter Yates directed and he surely knows he way around this type of film (his 1967 ROBBERY is a classic of the genre) and the script is by the esteemed William Goldman, but they neglected to included any sort of pay-off. An African diplomat enlists a motley group of burglars (led by Robert Redford & George Segal) to steal a eponymous jewel only to have them lose the rock (several times). There's lots of clever dialog, some very funny set pieces (like a stolen helicopter landing on the WRONG roof) and a sparkling supporting cast. Redford & Segal are great and Ron Leibman, Paul Sand and Moses Gunn are in it too. William Redfield plays a befuddled cop and Zero Mostel is a shyster lawyer. The fun music score is by Quincy Jones.

The Hot Rock is Peter Yates' goofy, likable crime comedy about some goofy, likable crooks – all of them, in that small gang they forge, going through their own respective Hell in trying apprehend a diamond they've been employed to steal. The film works because of Yates' ability to keep things moving at the tremendous pace that he does, the film effectively a series of causality driven set pieces leading from one to the other as these guys try to come into possession of the Macguffin, of which each are as funny and as involving and as creative enough to make the film worth one's while. The text began life as a straight up heist novel; a leaner, meaner piece as penned by Donald Westlake sometime in the late 1960s to add to his already increasing canon of Parker (later Walker, then Porter, under various filmic guises) books that had been published. Yates plays it as a straight up caper comedy, without any slow; gradual; misplaced realisation that it's going to get nastier as things progress - it is very much the sort of film in which the lead crook is robbed of his watch, at knife-point, outside of a police station and in a very specific way that just makes it quite funny without necessarily being overly nasty.That lead crook is a certain John Dortmunder, played by Robert Redford in a role that predates The Sting by about a year; a man out on the streets after yet another prison stretch who is eyed within minutes of his release by his equally criminally minded brother-in-law Andy Kelp (Segal). The two men share an odd relationship; Kelp is this pink shirt wearing, rather highly-pitched voiced man whom takes a slap in the face from Dortmunder but humorously chases him down anyway via his car and pins him into a location so as to speak to him. Kelp is bringing Dortmunder into an operation organised by an African United Nations representative named Amusa (Gunn), a man who wants them to steal that of a diamond; the titular hot rock; a diamond which belonged to his forefathers but was stolen from them and that has since been thrust up into the air in terms of ownership, shifting possession from tribe to tribe and colonial master to colonial master like a free addition of a daily newspaper on a mainline. Presently, the diamond is there for the taking whilst inside of an exhibition at a New York museum.Amusa, despite being the man of distinction that he is, rejects the more modern; more regimented notions of paperwork and the courts to decide who's "tribe" or "side" the rightful owner of this jewel is, and has turned to a more old fashioned labour of theft and crime to take what he wants. Brought in, after Dortmunder reluctantly accepts the proposal, is a demolitions expert named Greenberg (Sand) and that of Murch (Leibman), a petrol-head if ever there was one, whose base of operation is right beside that of a highway featuring numerous lanes in each direction and whose recordings of car engines filling the room of his garage plays to him like beautiful music would to us. Schemes are cooked up and plans go awry; we marvel at the manner in which these people, clearly gifted in that art of thinking and deducing if it means swiping something that isn't theirs, concoct such audacious ideas, that come across as fail-proof before being put into action, only to unravel at their very seams in what is writing that takes time to build an idea before gleefully knocking back down again with escalated creativity.The film has a distinct charm to its proceedings, whether it's because of the fact we're asked to assume that a bunch of security guards can be fooled into thinking the bandits are trapped the other side of a door marked 'exit', or something else, remains somewhat elusive. The allure is in the processes the four leads go through; the wit and interplay they share between them, but always the creativity behind the concocting of audacious stunts to try and swing the tide back to their favour. Where immense pleasure is derived from the creativity therein of the writing of these people and their ideas they cook up, there is that masochistic ring to proceedings when it becomes prominent those in charge of such stamps of creativity are taking more pleasure in laying out the proverbial trail of elastic to trip these guys up than they are enjoying them get away with an ingenious idea. Never do we feel that these people are of the really hardened criminally minded sort, a notion the film plays with when, during one instance, the guys must act as exactly this in order to fool someone into thinking their life's in danger; the scene is played with a blind goofiness that keeps everything in check, these people are consistent to their behaviour and Yates to the tone of the film, but the piece is about a group of men going through some thoroughly inconsistent times, and our pleasures derived from watching them react to that is the point.